Jeffrey Vanneste

I'm so happy about the new bootstrapper in visual studio 2005. I just started reading the MSDN magazine October 2004 issue and it has an article on the new bootstrapper. I write most of the installation/deployment scripts that we use at work for the projects I work on. We originally started off using MSI files but I gave Nullsoft Scriptable Install System a try and was really impressed with how easy it was to use. I started using NSIS to release patches for the product I was working on and it worked very slick. When we refactored pretty much our entire product I had the opportunity to redo the installation packages that I had previously wrote.
The new bootstrapper makes it very easy to include prerequisites with the deployment of your application. You could make a CD with .NET 2.0, DirectX, Windows Media Player, and SQL Server. The article also mentions you can have it require any third party applications so it's not limited to just Microsoft ones. Anyways, if you deal with deploying products check out the article linked below.

Bootstrapper: Use the Visual Studio 2005 Bootstrapper to Kick-Start Your Installation -- MSDN Magazine, October 2004