How to migrate Visual Studio setup project to InstallShield Limited Edition?

Question

I have Visual Studio setup projects (MSI / vdproj) in solutions I am attempting to migrate to Visual Studio 2012 where support for these projects has been pushed off to third parties with the suggested replacements being WiX or the in-app-linked InstallShield Limited Edition (ISLE).

Some refer to the Visual Studio 2012 Compatibility document or the seemingly less helpful Windows Installer Deployment document as the place to go to find out more. The former says of "MSI setup (.vdproj)" projects:

You can also use ISLE to import data and settings from Visual Studio Installer projects.

How does one do this?

Busywork

This is an incredibly boneheaded move by Microsoft, imho. Hopefully they will bring setup projects (or something like them) back. – Willemstad

Answer 1

It was right in front of me on the Windows Installer Deployment page, with bold an everything.

In Visual Studio, create an InstallShield LE project from the New Project dialog box. Once created, select the new project and then click the InstallShield LE option on the Visual Studio menu bar and choose Visual Studio Deployment Project Import Wizard.

I was looking too hard for an external "importing tool".

For my setup I found it worked best to pull in the other project outputs if I chose "Add to solution" when creating the new ISLE Setup and Deployment "Other" project.

Busywork

I followed above mentioned steps and it converted with 0 errors, now? – Saturn

You should now have an InstallShield project imported with your previous setup project's settings. Go through the various screens available in the limited edition to make sure it has the values you want and build an installer. – Busywork

Answer 2

After a lot of canvasing by disgruntled Visual Studio users Microsoft returned the MSI functionality for Visual Studio 2013, see: Visual Studio Installer Projects Extension

So if you use Visual Studio 2013 then you can open existing Visual Studio Installer Projects or create new one using the following official Microsoft extension: Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 Installer Projects

Hundley