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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-09T04:31:03+00:00

I have started using the preview of Microsoft Team Foundation Service (TFS in the

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I have started using the preview of Microsoft Team Foundation Service (TFS in the cloud, henceforth TFService) for a small project, and I’m currently setting up builds using the online build service included with TFService.

What I want to do is to add an installer of some kind. I’ve previously worked with InstallShield Limited Edition, WIX and Inno Setup and would like to keep using one of those if possible.

I’ve previously integrated Inno Setup as part of a build process (TFS 2010). This involved installing Inno Setup on the build computer, and adding a custom build task for running an inno setup script. The last part should be possible with TFService as well, because it’s possible to create custom build process templates.

However, I realize that installing anything such as Inno Setup or InstallShield will not work with TFService, since it’s not possible to install any 3rd party software on the build computer (it’s just a cloud service running on some unknown virtual computer which I cannot access).

So my question is; is there a way to automatically create an installer as part of a build process running on TFService? For example, is the build service capable of building installshield projects out of the box (there’s a license included with Visual Studio after all)? Or are there other ways to do this?

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  1. Editorial Team

    I have some experience with this trying to get WiX and InstallShield to work with Microsoft TFS Preview cloud service using their managed build agents. On these agents, you don’t have administrator rights and you can’t install software.

    This currently rules out InstallShield which must be installed.

    It is however possible to check the WiX binaries into source control and pull them down as part of your build.

    WiX uses .wixproj files (MSBuild) to define their project compile activities. This references a targets file and other properties ( referencing registry values ) that won’t exist when you deploy this way. A small bit of hacking will get all of these properties to resolve to workable values.

    The one problem you may still have though (and I’m thinking TFS managed build environment ) is that you may have to configure your projects to skip MSI ICE validation suites. On the build machines, I played on the windows installer service was outright disabled and this prevented the tests from running.

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