Building IA on Visual Studio Team Services online

[lneumann]

Hi,

is there a supported way how to build an InstallAware set up project in the Visual Studio Team Services online?

We are migrating our physical build server to VSTS online and I was able to get everything building fine, with the exception of the last step which is packaging the built binaries into a single InstallAware setup... Right now, we have a physical build server where I manually installed InstallAware and then just call miabuild.exe to create the setup, but physically installing anything on VSTS online is obviously not possible.

Thank you
Lukas Neumann

[FrancescoT]

Dear Lukas,

I am not a "Visual Studio Team Services online", but of course you will need to install at least the "Miabuild tool" and components (including Application RTMs).

"Manually installing this tool is not recommended, you should use the InstallAware setup itself to install the tool, along with any required plug-ins and application runtimes, as well as the authenticode support files to enable code signing."

Hope this helps you.

Regards

[lneumann]

Hi,

I guess my question should have been more specific - do you have any experience,support or any resources about building InstallAware setups in Visual Studio online Hosted Pool? The visual studio online and its hosted pools (https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/docs ... osted-pool) seem to be currently the hottest and the most marketed build environment by Microsoft, so I'd have hoped InstallAware had some resources to hand.

Executing standard InstallAware setup is not an option in hosted pool, because it is not a machine you can remote desktop to, you can only upload files and execute them, but without any UI or interaction. But would it be possible for example to install/copy InstallAware (or just miabuild.exe) in a non-interactive mode without requiring admin privileges?

I'm just trying to find a way how to make InstallAware work, because I love this product and we had nothing but good experience with it over the years, but if I cannot make it work in the new modern build environment our company will have to look for alternative solution which I personally would hate to.

Lukas Neumann

[FrancescoT]

Dear Lukas,

InstallAware as many other tools, has to be installed and you cannot simply copy some files.
This is also necessary in order to properly install the command line build tool.

In addition, you also need to install your license file to activate the tool.

All the above operations can be executed non-interactively (silent install), but at any rate, it's not possible to just copy some files.
Furthermore some IA components (as used plugins or tools) needs to be registered.

Honestly, I don't know if it will be possible to support "Visual Studio Team Services online" in future. Currently, I can only confirm that this is not possible.

Regards

[rev23dev]

I'm also looking into this.

Am I able to use my license for a Build Agent on Visual Studio Team Services?

IA should look at creating an IA Build Task for Visual Studio Marketplace to make this easier

[FrancescoT]

Dera Rev23dev,

in reality I missed to update this thread.

InstallAware X6 supports "Visual Studio Team Services" already.

Hope this helps you.

Regards

[rev23dev]

Oh really? That's exciting! Is there any documentation on what to do here?

[FrancescoT]

Dear Rev23dev,

you only need to specify your "VS team Service" instance via TFS Connect to Server ...from IA IDE, Team Foundation -> Connect to Server.

Regards

[rev23dev]

Oh I see. I think Lukas (as well as myself) was talking about a build in the Cloud for Continuous Integration. So when we check in code to VSTS part of the build process would be to build the InstallAware installer as well.