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VDProj to WiX Converter is a Visual Studio extension that generates WiX-based setup projects
from your existing Visual Studio setup projects (aka vdproj). It supports all Visual Studio versions
starting from VS 2005 and all vdproj features including variables, msm and msi packages,
custom actions, built-in dialogs, etc.
Is VDProj outdated?
Beginning with Visual Studio 2005, vdproj has been used as the basic deployment solution.
Unlike ClickOnce that emerged later, it is vdproj that for a long time remained the technology
of choice for deploying various solution types. Despite the fact that such projects are innumerable
in this world, and you are likely to find a couple of dozens on your own machine, Microsoft declared vdproj
deprecated and unsupported in VS 2012. And if you try to open a solution with a vdproj setup, Visual Studio 2012
will throw this message "Unsupported: this version of Visual Studio does not have the following project
types installed or does not support them."
Convert your VDProj to a WiX setup in one click
Right after installation, the VDProj to WiX Converter lets you switch from VDProj to WiX
(Windows Installer XML). Just open your solution with a Visual Studio setup project, right click it and
choose "Convert to WiX project". A new WiX-based setup project will be automatically added to your solution.
All features of Visual Studio setups are supported
The VDProj to WiX Converter supports all project types and all features of Visual Studio and WiX setup projects:
- Exe setup bundles
- Msi installation packages
- Msm merge modules
- Web setup projects
- Built-in variables
- Search variables
- Custom actions
- Built-in dialog boxes
Add-in Express for Office and .NET projects in focus
The VDProj to WiX Converter was developed in the first place to support our customers who move their
existing Add-in Express based projects to Visual Studio 2012. All .vdproj setups that you used for
deploying your Office add-in solutions can be changed to .wixproj using this converter.
System requirements
- Visual Studio 2005 with WiX 3.6+ installed
- Visual Studio 2008 with WiX 3.6+ installed
- Visual Studio 2010 with WiX 3.6+ installed
- Visual Studio 2012 with WiX 3.6+ installed
- Visual Studio Express Edition is not supported
I must say your converter application really works nice when converting projects from the old .vdproj windows installer to the new WiX installer.
Just prior to discovering your converter I was going through the pains of "hand rolling" the conversions of 11 different setup projects.
Since we are hoping to standardize on VS 2012 for all of our forward and existing work we have a number of addition solutions
and setup projects what will need to be converted so this will save us a great amount of time.
Scott Graunke, Sterling Computer Systems
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