Alternatives to using MSI's - MSBuild?

Question

I work in an environment that has leaned heavy on the use of MSI's. With the latest versions of Visual Studio this type of deployment setup is no longer provided. I've heard that using MSBuild is the preferred alternative. Does MSBuild create a file / other that a team could run on production servers? Developers do not have permissions to prod servers here. We have to pass our msi's to another team to run them. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Visual Studio Deployment Projects (aka VDPROJ) deprecated from Visual Studio 2012. The output of VDPROJ is MSI. Microsoft recommendation is WIX as a replacement for creating MSI installers. WIX is an XML based (.wixproj) project.

Don't confuse MSBuild with WIX. MSBuild is a build engine for generating code from XML based projects ( .csproj, vbproj, etc. ).

Answer 2

You can use Wix

There is a steep learning curve, but it is very powerful

Answer 3

Use WiX toolset - it is a nice alternative and integrates well with visual studio and team build.

http://wixtoolset.org/