I was forced to remain using Visual Studio 2010 and not upgrade to Visual Studio 2012 or Visual Studio 2013, because my company has dozens of internally used utility apps that use visual studio installer/setup projects. It just is not worth the effort to migrate to another installer technology.

Surprising, last year Microsoft reversed the decision to remove set-up projects, as politically the focus was on getting developers making Windows Store applications where the end product is submitted to Microsoft to host and manage. I write this post as I still come across developers that are unaware that this functionality has been returned.

You can download the extension package from here that updates Visual Studio 2013 only (not Visual Studio 2012)

After installing the extension you will see the project template available in Visual Studio 2013 shown below

I am currently evaluating Visual Studio 2015 preview, so one naturally assumed that you would be able to create a new set-up project as the functionality had been returned in the previous version, albeit via an add-in extension, I assumed I could see the project template shown in the image above, but it was not there.

It turns out that Microsoft have changed their mind again, and decided not to include installer/setup project in Visual Studio 2015, article available here.

We’d like to thank you all for your comments on this UserVoice entry. We have been discussing the comments on InstallShield Limited Edition (ISLE) raised here with Flexera and we are currently working with them to address the top issues. At this stage we have no plans to include the former Visual Studio Setup Projects in future product versions but we will continue to work with Flexera and the community to ensure Visual Studio customers’ setup needs will be met with no-cost tooling that supports a broad range of scenarios.

Tony Goodhew, Program Manager, VS Pro.

 This is a very frustrating development, a decision based on political and not technical issues. it just means a whole class of Visual Studio developer simply won’t upgrade.