How to create .msi and setup.exe file from the command line using devenv.exe

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I have a lot of Solutions and Setup projects to build to get ready for a release. This can take the better part of a day. There is a lot of checking in and out of TFS and building projects in a certain order. Therefore, I decided to automate the process. I made a MS Access application, because of ease of use. Everything works except the creation of the .msi and setup.exe files. I'm using VS 2015.

What I have tried:

I've made sure the Configuration Manager has the correct projects ticked off. But the only thing that happens is the solution is built and the setup projects are skipped. Below are some of the variations of the command line code I've used. One of these or some variation thereof ran without error and produced dll's for the solution but never .msi or exe files (which is what I'm concerned with). Any Help?

1)

VB

devenv.exe "%PathToSolution%\SLNFile.sln" /Project "%PathToProject%\ProjectFile.vdproj" /Rebuild "SetUps|Any CPU" /Out "%PathForErrs%\vs_errors.txt"

2)

devenv.exe "%PathToSolution%\SLNFile.sln" /Rebuild "Release|Any CPU" /Project  "%PathToProject%\ProjectFile.vdproj" /Rebuild "SetUps|Any CPU"  /Out "%PathForErrs%\vs_errors.txt"

3)

devenv.exe "%PathToSolution%\SLNFile.sln" /Rebuild "Release|Any CPU" /Project  "%PathToProject%\ProjectFile.vdproj" /Rebuild /ProjectConfig "SetUps|Any CPU"  /Out "%PathForErrs%\vs_errors.txt"

Thanks in advance.

Posted 28-Mar-18 11:28am

ehwash

Updated 28-Mar-18 23:01pm

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Maciej Los 29-Mar-18 4:07am

"ProjectFile.vdproj"?

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Maciej Los · Answer 1 · 2018-03-28T23:02:00

Solution 1

On the first look your project file has wrong extension. It should be vbproj instead of vdproj (b<=d). Possible extensions: *.vbproj, *.csproj, *.vcxproj. See: Solutions and Projects in Visual Studio[^]

For further details about denenv.exe command line switches, check this:
Devenv Command Line Switches[^]
Building on the Command Line[^]

Posted 28-Mar-18 23:02pm

Maciej Los

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ehwash 29-Mar-18 10:44am

Thanks but vdproj is a valid extension for VS 2015 setup projects. But your focus on the "d" has led me to the type of Extension it is. And that is a Deployment project. I've now added the /deploy switch and I'm much closer to a build then before. Now for some reason the command line execution of the devenv.exe can not find a dependency within my project.