Upgrading From IS 2013 to IS 2014 in VS 2012 Environment
I have upgraded to new versions of IS several times in the past, but I have never done it when integrated with Visual Studio. I don’t see anything in VS where there is any IS configuration. We are currently using IS 2013 Premier with VS 2012. So I have a few questions about upgrading: 1. If I just Install IS 2014 Premier will VS 2012 magically begin using it? 2. I don’t see any links for upgrading IS on the web site or in the help. Are there any? I just don’t want to get part way into the upgrade and end up with nothing. 3. Presumably the developers using IS 2013LE will have to upgrade as well… right? Thanks for any insight.
1. Yes, if you go ahead and install InstallShield 2014 on your machine that has Visual Studio 2012, InstallShield 2014 will be registered with Visual Studio. Therefore, anytime you open an installation project from within Visual Studio, it'll launch InstallShield 2014.
Note that Visual Studio can be integrated with only one version of InstallShield at a time. The latest version of InstallShield that is installed or repaired on a system is the one that is used for Visual Studio integration.
So, assuming that InstallShield 2014 is the last version that was installed or repaired on your machine: If you later want to use InstallShield 2013 with Visual Studio 2012 for a particular installation project that was created in that version of InstallShield, you might want to run a repair of InstallShield 2013; this would register InstallShield 2013 with Visual Studio.
By the way, you may want to skip the RTM version of InstallShield 2014, and go right to InstallShield 2014 SP1. The SP1 release is a full minor upgrade—not a patch. The consolidated release notes for both RTM and SP1 are here: http://helpnet.flexerasoftware.com/installshield21helplib/ReleaseNotes.htm
