Welcome to the Power Toys Pack Installer
The Pack Installer is a tool that will let you see the latest Power Toys for Visual Studio, and other great developer oriented tools. It allows you to easily mark any tool or set of tools for download and installation, and streamline the installation process.
Updates05/17/2007 A 1.0.1 release is now available to help with recent issues around exceptions during downloads.
03/12/2007 Included with the 1.0 release are the Spec and Test plan.
03/12/2007 The 1.0 release of Pack Installer is now available, read on for more details.
01/18/2007 After several months of hard work we finally have a second Beta release ready for consumption! The new Beta adds tagging and filtering of the tool list, as well as support for VSI based content.
11/07/2006 Some users are reporting a crash at startup, please make sure you are using the Beta release as the Alpha feed file is broken. For more info click
here.
10/27/2006 The Beta release of the Pack Installer is available from the Releases tab, click
here for more information.
09/26/2006 If you're having trouble connecting through a firewall click
here.
Instructions for running Pack Installer
- Save the PackInstaller.exe file to your local machine.
- Double click the executable.
Features of the Pack Installer
- Easy selection of multiple tools
- Single EULA screen with one accept button
- Uninstallation of existing tools supported
- Tools list can be sorted based on user preference
In addition to being a tool for us to help distribute the Power Toys for Visual Studio the Pack Installer is a great starting point for your own software distribution tool. Although the current version uses openly available files to download and install, the code could be easily modified to connect to a secure software repository instead.
One quick note about using the Pack Installer. We haven't figured out exactly what to do about tools that have pre-requisites. Any tools that require pre-requisites may not install correctly if their pre-requisites aren't installed. The easiest way to check on the pre-reqs for each tool is to go to their site here on CodePlex, they should be documented. Aside from the .NET Framework 2.0 runtime, I think the only major pre-req is for MSBee. That tool requires the .NET Framework 1.1 SDK to be installed. If it isn't, you will likely get an Installation Failed error.
Plans going forwardStay tuned for more details...
How can you contribute to the Pack Installer?
- Create new or find existing bugs, or feature requests, you want to work on
- Leave a note in the comments that you're going to investigate this bug (until you have developer rights, you won't be able to assign bugs to yourself)
- Download the latest sources and create a bug fix
- Zip up your changes and post them as an attachment to the work item
- Fill out the Project Assignment Agreement form and follow the Pack Installer Assignment Agreement Instructions to send it to us.
Note that by posting your submission to the Issue Tracker, you agree to do so under the
CodePlex TOUJoin the CommunityPack Installer is all about spreading the word about the great developer power toys available for Visual Studio. How can you help?