Starting Visual Studio 2012, the Setup project for Visual Studio is not supported anymore and the only free alternative is to use the Install Shield Limited Edition (LE).

In this post, I will describes the steps to successfully:

A. Deploy a project to GAC (Global Assembly Cache)

B  Generate/pacakage Single MSI for installation

 

Steps:

1. Start by downloading the Install Shield here. And installing it.

2. Next is to create a new install shield limited edition project.

3. Follow the wizard, and in the step 2, right click the destination computer and select [GlobalAssemblyCache]

4. Drag and drop the Primary output from the Solution (top pane).

5. Go to every item in the [GlobalAssemblyCache], right click Dependencies from scan at build. Be sure to unselect other reference assemblies so it will not be registered in GAC.

Single MSI Generation:

6. Now to create a single MSI setup, Go to step 6 (Releases), Select the Single Image. In the build tab, Set compression = compressed, and on the Setup.exe tab set the Setup Launcher to No.

7. Right click the Solution, then select Configuration Manager, in the InstallShield project set the configuration to Single Image. Then Right click Install Shield project – > Build.

8. Go to Install Shield Project – > Express – > Single Image – > DiskImages -> Disk1. Viola. the MSI can be found there.