How to build visual studio installer project (.vdproj) from jenkins to generate .exe and .msi files?

6
votes

I have a visual studio installer project (.vdproj) and I wanted to build it from jenkins. Could someone provide me the solution for this? I tried with msbuild which didn't workout for me. Then i tried the following in batch file.

devenv.exe pathToProject\projectName.vdproj /build "Release|Any CPU"

which didn't work.

Then I tried this

devenv.com  pathToProject\projectName.vdproj /build "Release|Any CPU"

In this case the project was built but .exe and .msi files were not created in the Release (nor Debug) folder.

2
c#visual-studiojenkinsmsbuildcontinuous-integration
Please define "didn't work"... were there errors? what errors? – fredrik
No it was not error instead the execution didn't start. The command prompt didn't show any error. – Bidhu B
@LeoLiu-MSFT In my case this builds successfully but doesn't generate .exe and .msi files in the Release folder. – Bidhu B
@BidhuB, Have you tried your command line in the local without jenkins? If it build successfully? And if you use my command line in the local, still not generate .exe and .msi files in the Release folder? – Leo Liu-MSFT
@BidhuB, take a look at this link, it seems that they had the same issue that you have. There is also a fix for it.telaeris.com/kb/jenkins-build-error-vdproj – Goozo

2 Answers

0
votes

How to build visual studio installer project (.vdproj) from jenkins to generate .exe and .msi files?

Please try following build command line:

devenv.com  pathToProject\projectName.vdproj /build "Release"

As we know we could not specify the platform for the Installer project, because:

The architecture is specified in the setup project's properties window which, confusingly enough, is not the same as the property pages, which is what you are showing there.

If you select the setup project in solution explorer and click F4 you sould see the properties window with AddRemoveProgramsIcon, Manufacturer and so on. Down that list is TargetPlatform where you specify x86 or x64.

Certification: Can't set 64 bit target for Setup Project in Visual Studio 2017

enter image description here

See Automating the build of MSI setup packages on Jenkins for some details.

Note: The project file .vdproj is not supported by MSBuild, that is the reason why you can not use MSBuild to build it.

0
votes

Buiding the .vdproj file from jenkins requires a register "EnableOutOfProcBuild" to be added as DWORD with value as 0 in the below hives.

"HKEY_CURRENT_USER - > Software -> Microsoft->Visual Studio ->14.0_Config -> MSBuild"

and 

"HKEY_USERS- > .Default - > Software -> Microsoft->Visual Studio ->14.0_Config -> MSBuild".

You can use the below command to build the project.

devenv.com  pathToProject\projectName.vdproj /build "Release" or "Release|Any CPU"