MSI wrapper for msdeploy?
- by Nate
Just moved to vs2010 and found that deployment is quite different.
The old way I did things (vs2008) was as follows:
1) I right-click on my web app and "Add web deployment project"
2) Start a web setup project, dump that web deployment project output in it, and add any custom installer actions (connection strings or other user input) as necessary using the custom installer class. Easy!
Now that I don't have the "Add web deployment project" option (or can't find it!?!?), msdeploy seems to be the thing to do. I have successfully got this to work via command line, but I still need some custom actions. In this example, we have separated our web services deployment from our UI deployment (Silverlight) so that they can be hosted separately or together. So... during/after install I need to know from the user where the web services are located. So I tried this:
1) Start a web setup project, and include all of the deploy package files (.deploy.cmd, /setparameters.xml, etc)
2) Gather user input in my custom installer class, and shell execute the deploy.cmd.
Problem is... the deploy fails on deleting the zip file since it's use by another process (I assume it's my installer). Anyone have any ideas on how to get around this? Or is there a better way to accomplish this task?
Any input would be appreciated!
Nate