Visual Studio Setup Project Custom Dialog

Question

I have created a custom dialog for Visual Studio Setup Project using the steps described here

Now I have a combobox in one of my dialogs. I want to populate the comb

Answer 1

I guess you'll have to go beyond the out-of-the-box setup and deployment package and try a third party app.

You may want to look at:

• Wix
• Nullsoft Scriptable Install System

Both are free; they might give you the customization that you need.

Answer 2

I've always found the custom dialogs in visual studio setup projects to be woefully limited and barely functional.

By contrast, I normally create custom actions that display winforms gui's for any remotely difficult tasks during setup. Works really well and you can do just about anything you want by creating a custom action and passing a few parameters across.

In the dayjob we built a collection of common custom actions for tasks like application config and database creation / script execution to get around custom dialog limitations.