These DLLs, however, come pre-installed with Windows 98 and higher.
The Bootstrapper will load other Windows® DLLs such as msi.dll to perform Windows Installer application code checking, and Wintrust.dll to verify component signatures. The only hard dependency the Bootstrapper has is the C runtime, which is embedded in the Bootstrapper executable through static linking and therefore does not require a separate installation.
Minimal platform requirements Since the purpose of the Bootstrapper is to easily pre-install application dependencies, it is essential that it have few, if any, dependencies itself.
It therefore adds only a small amount of overhead to the installation process, which can save the user from having to download much larger redistributables if he does not need them. Minimal initial download size The Bootstrapper is a small executable that weighs in at a mere 222 KB, and takes about one minute to download on a 28.8 Kbps modem. It serves as a single installer that integrates the separate installers for all the components making up an application, and provides a wealth of features and services.
The Visual Studio 2005 Bootstrapper lets you provide users with a simple, automated way to detect, download, and install an application and its prerequisites. The Visual Studio® 2005 Bootstrapper solves this problem by allowing you to provide an easy, integrated way to install all of the different prerequisite pieces required by your application. This is a poor user experience, to say the least, and many users would give up. If the components need to be installed in a particular order, there are additional opportunities for things to go wrong. If any reboots are required, they must restart the machine and resume from where they left off. Then they must manually download and run the installers for each missing component, selecting the appropriate choices in the installation UI.
First, the user has to check whether each component is already installed on the machine. This involves a number of complicated steps.
NET Framework 2.0, DirectX 9.0 for Managed Code, and SQL Server 2005 Express Edition before installing the actual application. To install the game, the user must install the. Consider also that the game may use a SQL Server™ 2005 Express Edition database to store game state and history. In order to present rich and speedy graphics, the application would likely depend on the managed DirectX® libraries. The app won't run, of course, unless the. If any component is missing, your application will most likely fail, typically with a cryptic error message about a missing DLL file that will send your customers straight to your support desk.Īs an example, consider a gaming application written in Visual Basic® 2005. If you have ever written an application intended to run on nonstandardized desktops (or, as some would say, PCs in the wild), you understand that one of the biggest challenges is installing the components required by your application onto the target computers. Generating the Bootstrapper Setup.exe with MSBuild This article uses the following technologies:Īn Integrated Installer for Applications and Prerequisite Components Use the Visual Studio 2005 Bootstrapper to Kick-Start Your Installation New information has been added to this article since publication.