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When I deploy my application in VS2010, I see two options: InstallShield LE and Visual Studio Installer. Why are there two options? What is the advantage of using InstallShield LE over Visual Studio Installer?
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InstallShield enables you to create, modify, or build your installation from within Microsoft Visual Studio. Integration Features. InstallShield is fully integrated within the Visual Studio shell.
InstallShield is a proprietary software tool for creating installers or software packages. InstallShield is primarily used for installing software for Microsoft Windows desktop and server platforms, though it can also be used to manage software applications and packages on a variety of handheld and mobile devices.
The best free alternative to InstallShield is Inno Setup, which is also Open Source.
InstallShield Limited Edition for Visual Studio provides a small subset of the world-class functionality found in our other InstallShield editions. Many of the features our InstallShield customers love are locked and unavailable in your InstallShield Limited Edition.
To update this a little, Microsoft seems to have thrown in the towel on their own installer project type. It is not included in the Visual Studio 11 developer preview, and there are forum/blog posts that indicate this is no longer a supported product. If you are searching for what to use for new projects, I would steer clear of the Visual Studio Installer. Hopefully when VS11 finally is released, there will be a free version of InstallShield included.
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These are just default tools that can help you create simple installers for your applications. Most difference are UI related, there's not much functionality in either of them.
If you want to choose a setup authoring tool, take a look at these threads:
There are lots of threads like this which mention free and commercial setup authoring tools.
Basically, if you want a simple installer, you can use Visual Studio setup or InstallShield LE. If you want more advanced features, you need to find a different setup authoring tool that fits your needs.
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