InstallShield 2012 Spring Express Edition User Guide

Chapter 19: Integrating InstallShield with External Applications
Integrating with Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server
• Source control—Use the Source Control Explorer to integrate your InstallShield project with Team
Foundation version control and manage changes to your InstallShield projects and your Visual
Studio solutions.
• Automated builds—Use Team Foundation Build to compile, test, and deploy your InstallShield
projects and your Visual Studio solutions on a regular basis. Your installation is automatically
updated with your latest source files every time your solution is built, always staying current.
• Project management—Track work items such as bugs, tasks, and project documentation for your
InstallShield projects and your Visual Studio solutions. The project status is available to your entire
team from within Team System Web Access, and from within Team Explorer.
Integration Requirements
To integrate InstallShield with Team Foundation Server, install InstallShield on each machine that you
want to be able to create, update, or build InstallShield projects. Thus, InstallShield should be installed
on each machine on which you want to create and update InstallShield projects. It should also be
installed on a machine that is designated as a build agent for InstallShield projects that are stored in
Team Foundation Server. For InstallShield licensing details, refer to the InstallShield End-User License
Agreement (EULA).
In order for a build agent to build some types of projects and solutions, you may need to install
additional software on the build machine. For example, to build a C++ project, which requires the C++
compiler and possibly other dependencies, install Visual Studio on the build machine.
If you are using multiple build agents to build your Team Foundation Server projects, you may want to
assign a particular build tag to any agents that are on machines that have InstallShield; you could also
apply that special build tag to each build definition that is created for an InstallShield project. That way,
only build machines that have InstallShield installed would be used to build InstallShield installations.
For more information about creating build tags and assigning them to agents and build definitions, see
the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server documentation.
If you are queuing a build on a 64-bit build machine, ensure that you have configured the build
definition for your InstallShield project so that the 32-bit version of MSBuild is used to load the
InstallShield.Tasks.dll file (which is a 32-bit file); otherwise, you will encounter a build error
informing you that the InstallShield.Tasks.dll file could not be loaded. To select the 32-bit version of
MSBuild, click the Process tab of your build definition in Team Explorer. Then, under the Advanced
node, find the MSBuild Platform setting, and select x86. Note that if you are using a 32-bit build
machine, you can select either Auto or x86 for the MSBuild Platform setting.
If you install Team Explorer on the same machine that has InstallShield and Visual Studio, you can use
Team Explorer from within your InstallShield projects that are open in Visual Studio. This enables you
to perform tasks such as the following:
• Use Source Control Explorer when you are working on your InstallShield projects.
• Configure builds for your InstallShield projects and Visual Studio solutions.
• Queue new builds.
Note that when you queue a build for a solution that includes an InstallShield project, the installation
that is built is copied to an Install subfolder within the drop folder. When the InstallShield build detects
that it is running under Team Foundation Build, it copies the installation to the final output location for
the solution (OutDir)—namely, the binaries directory, which in turn is copied to the drop folder at the
end of the Team Foundation Build process.
372 ISE-1900-UG00 InstallShield 2012 Spring Express Edition User Guide