visualstudio2017: defend against Chocolatey AutoUninstaller

[jberezanski]

When uninstalling the first VS 2017 product package installed on the machine, the Chocolatey AutoUninstaller will remove the VS Installer, removing all other VS 2017 products.

Until chocolatey/choco#1257 is resolved, the packages need to work around this behavior.

[ferventcoder]

What are all of the other VS 2017 products?

[ferventcoder]

Just trying to determine why if I uninstall VS 2017 that I would not want to remove everything?

[jberezanski]

Here is the full list of VS 2017 products:
Build Tools
Community
Enterprise
Feedback Client
Professional
Team Explorer
Test Agent
Test Controller
Test Professional

Each of these products can be installed and uninstalled independently, side-by-side with others. You can even install multiple instances of the same product in different directories (perhaps to test an untrustworthy extension?). None of the products appear in Programs and Features, only the Visual Studio Installer (which manages all instances of all products installed on the machine) does.

This differs radically from the installation model of VS 2015 and earlier, where generally there was only one instance of the given Visual Studio major version on the system (the "integrated shell") and installing various Visual Studio products either added functionality to that instance (for example, augmenting Professional by installing Test Professional) or replaced it (Enterprise).

With VS 2017, the user can, for example:

1. install VS 2017 Feedback Client <-- this installs the VS Installer
2. install VS 2017 Community
3. install VS 2017 Professional
4. uninstall VS 2017 Community
5. install VS 2017 Test Controller
6. uninstall VS 2017 Feedback Client

Currently, during step 6) the AutoUninstaller will attempt to remove the VS Installer, while it clearly should be left intact (there are other VS products still installed: Professional and Feedback Client).

[jberezanski]

@heaths I've noticed your comment which seems to imply it is possible to install the VS Installer only, without installing any VS product. Could you please confirm that one could, for instance, download the Feedback Client bootstrapper and invoke it as such:

vs_FeedbackClient.exe --update --quiet

and it will install just the VS Installer (on a machine which does not contain any VS 2017 bits)?

(I don't see the --update switch mentioned in the documentation. There is the update command, but its description only mentions updating an already installed product.)

If there was a way (supported and/or documented) to install just the VS Installer, it would allow me to sidestep the issue with the over-eager Chocolatey AutoUninstaller - the visualstudio2017-installer package would actually install the Installer.

[heaths]

We are updating documentation currently and it should be out soon. The update command actually updates an instance. The bootstrapper passes most command line arguments through to the installer, but some like --update are handled explicitly.

[jberezanski]

Great! Does it support updating the installer to a specific version, perhaps by providing a specific, local channel manifest file? I'd like to achieve fully repeatable and deterministic installs, if possible.

[heaths]

It will update to the latest version across all channels.

[jberezanski]

Tested: --quiet --update works (--update --quiet did not - exit code 5005) - it installs the installer on the machine if it wasn't present before. However, it does not register with Programs and Features, so unfortunately it won't help with the AutoUninstaller problem (but it will help with update scenarios).

[jberezanski]

chocolatey/choco#1257 (comment)

Adding a .skipAutoUninstall file will fix this.

[jberezanski]

@heaths I have been trying to update the VS Installer from an offline layout (prepared earlier using --layout). I have established, by trial and error, that the following example command line accomplishes this:

X:\Path\vs_FeedbackClient.exe --quiet --offline X:\Path\vs_installer.opc --update

Can you confirm this is the correct way? (I could not find this parameter documented anywhere.)

[heaths]

Why are you trying to update the OPC from an offline layout? We specifically designed the Visual Studio Installer to be "evergreen" so we can fix any issues necessary blocking updates. In fact, some product updates will require newer installers. You shouldn't try to control the version of the installer yourself.

But yes, that is confirmed correct.

Also, the --update --quiet ordering issue is known.

[jberezanski]

I need to do this on machines without Internet connectivity, because --quiet --update fails otherwise (it always tries to download the update from the net). And I would like the installer update to be a separate step from product update/installation, because I've seen cases where updating the installer as part of product update made the process unreliable (#7, #8).

[heaths]

@MikeMarlowe, are these issues fixed in more recent builds? I thought they were.

[MikeMarlowe]

Yes, updating your layout will update the version of the Visual Studio Installer it contains.
When you update your instance of Visual Studio that was installed from this layout, the Visual Studio Install will be updated.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/install/update-a-network-installation-of-visual-studio
has more details and shows examples of the commands to run