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Shaping the next generation deployment experience

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We are thinking about the next version of Visual Studio's deployment experience. I need your help to make the next version of Visual Studio's installation and deployment as valuable as possible.

Please send me your feedback. For example, I am looking for feedback in the following areas:

  • Do people like a lot of install options or just as few as possible.
  • Installation type: 
    • Do people install through the UI or silently?
    • Do you launch and forget about the installation or watch it go?
    • Is there a silent installation method that you would like to see supported in the future?
  • What is a reasonable time to install the product?
  • Do people like the companion products that we install?
  • Do people ever look at the installation logs? If so, what for?
  • How do you deploy your applications to your customers?
  • How often and under what circumstances do you uninstall Visual Studio?
  • How often and under what circumstances do you add/remove features to/from Visual Studio?

Additionally, Have you installed any applications recently, which had a cool install experience?  Tell us about it.

Send feedback and comments to <aaronru@nospam_microsoft.com> (prior to sending please remove "nospam_")

Thanks for improving Visual Studio.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    December 04, 2007
    Summary and action required We need your help to improve the Visual Studio Deployment experience. We

  • Anonymous
    December 04, 2007
    Aaron Ruckman is looking for feedback on your experience of installing and deploying Visual Studio.

  • Anonymous
    December 04, 2007
    Aaron Ruckman is looking for feedback on your experience of installing and deploying Visual Studio.

  • Anonymous
    December 04, 2007
    Summary and action required We need your help to improve the Visual Studio Deployment experience. We

  • Anonymous
    December 04, 2007
    What are your thoughts on the Visual Studio deployment experience? Have some feedback you'd like to share?

  • Anonymous
    December 04, 2007
    What are your thoughts on the Visual Studio deployment experience? Have some feedback you&#39;d like

  • Anonymous
    December 04, 2007
    Do you want to help shape the future of deployment for Visual Studio code name "Dev10"? Aaron Ruckman

  • Anonymous
    December 04, 2007
    我们正在思考下一代Visual Studio的部署体验。我们需要您帮助使下一版本Visual Studio的安装和部署尽可能有价值。 请发送您的意见，比如： Do people like a lot of

  • Anonymous
    December 04, 2007
    Do you want to help shape the future of deployment for Visual Studio code name &quot;Dev10&quot;? Aaron

  • Anonymous
    December 04, 2007
    我们正在思考下一代Visual Studio的部署体验。我们需要您帮助使下一版本Visual Studio的安装和部署尽可能有价值。 请发送您的意见，比如： Do people like a lot of

  • Anonymous
    December 04, 2007
    Summary and action required We need your help to improve the Visual Studio Deployment experience. We

  • Anonymous
    December 05, 2007
    Aiutiamo a migliorare la procedura di installazione di Visual Studio!

  • Anonymous
    December 05, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    December 05, 2007
    If it does, let Aaron Ruckman know :) Well, he asked, in fact, he's asked if there are better/cooler

  • Anonymous
    December 05, 2007
    If it does, let Aaron Ruckman know :) Well, he asked, in fact, he&#39;s asked if there are better/cooler

  • Anonymous
    December 05, 2007
    I wish if the installation performance was faster, all what the deployment does at the end is copying files from a DVD or a set of zip files to the hard drive, then it creates and modifies a long list of registry entries, nothing more than that.To understand me better, forget about the tons of artificial complexities introduced in this deployment tool, forget all these wonderful layers and ideas inside, forget all the rocket science, and perform that test:Write a small tool to track all the files modified on the hard drive, and all registry entries during the installation, and log them to a text file.After the installation, gather all registry modification in a text file (.reg) and all files copied from the installer above to a zip file. On a new machine, extract the zip file and merge the registry file, and you will find that this will install VS.NET One thousand times faster or maybe more! Then think about it again, if it was just a zip file and a reg file, how many machines will it work on? We have 2 CPUs (Intel and AMD) (which may mean 2 sets of zip files only, 3 perhaps?) When too much ideas in an installer are really too much? When will Microsoftians start thing about the user really want not about what a Microsoftian really wants to code today :-)Think of it the opposite way, if a microsoftian added on his resume “I wrote the installer of VS.NET 2005 SP1” and he applied for a position in a company where developers lost thousands of working hours updating that product and pressing the ok button once every half an hour, do you think he will get hired? :-)

  • Anonymous
    December 05, 2007
    Aaron Ruckman has posted a request for feedback on his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/aaronru/archive/2007/11/30/looking-to-improve-the-visual-studio-user-experience.aspx

  • Anonymous
    December 05, 2007
    The VS2005 SP1 install was probably the best in class.  Everything should be done like that in the future!

  • Anonymous
    December 05, 2007
    Aaron Ruckman has posted a request for feedback on his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/aaronru/archive

  • Anonymous
    December 05, 2007
    Want to tell us about your cool / not so cool experiences with deployment of your apps? Then go here

  • Anonymous
    December 06, 2007
    Installed it, failed! Installed .net framework 3.5 by myself. Tried to install again, worked like a charm!

  • Anonymous
    December 09, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 09, 2008
    G.T. said: "I wish if the installation performance was faster, all what the deployment does at the end is copying files from a DVD or a set of zip files to the hard drive, then it creates and modifies a long list of registry entries, nothing more than that."You have obviously NEVER written an installer before have you?? I have and I'm DYING to know how they built they Visual Studio installer!! :)If I answer the survey will you guys send me the WiX source for that installer??? :) (Seriously?)

  • Anonymous
    January 10, 2008
    I want to complain about the VS 2005 for Vista Update.  My Vista machine tried to install this update over and over again via Windows Update.  Every morning, I would turn on my machine and it would be unusable for 30 minutes as the TrustedInstaller tried to install this update.  Then, apparently it would fail, and I would suffer the same fate the next morning.  Today, I downloaded this update manually and ran the update as Administrator.  The progress bar sat at 3 seconds remaining for 15 minutes, and the finally and supposedly, it completed.My request, then, is that all installers should display progress.  Show me what's happening.  Make me fell warm and fuzzy inside that the system is not locked up.  The example I really like from Microsoft is the SQL Server Data Extract user interface.  It really gives a clear graphical display of what's happening in the extract process.Please don't make any more installations where all you see is a spinning circle or no progress bar movement.Thank you.

  • Anonymous
    January 24, 2008
    "It means that I work to make sure that the End-user's and devloper's Windows Vista Experience is pleasant for supported versions of the .Net Framework."FAIL!!!11!!I'm done installing ANY and ALL Microsoft beta development software.  I continually get burned by it, and the latest fiasco with VS 2008 is the last straw.  Done done done and done.Sorry if that was overly negative, but there's no way your development team should be throwing beta software over the wall if you're not going to be able to come up with a simple upgrade path on release of the retail version.

  • Anonymous
    February 27, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 20, 2009
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 27, 2011
    I had two very simple applications that I could never deploy to a Windows XP  computer for testing. I created several setup/deployment projects, installed several redist for 2005, 2008 still I could never get either application to run. I kept getting the same error that it could find Microsoft.VC90.DebugCRT when it was installed in the winsxs and winsxs/manifest folders. The dependency check indicated no issues with any of the DLLs. But still the application failed to even start. I finally removed Visual Studio 2008 and went back to 2005 and I was able to rebuild and test my applications. The online formation was useless. Microsoft information offered no way to debug such a problem other than the dependency checker. This is one of the reasons I don't care to upgrade my Microsoft products unless I have no choice. To upgrade is always a nightmare and not easy to go back. Thank goodness of backups