Use an installer to add .NET User Control to Visual Studio Toolbox

Question

I am creating a .NET user control that I will be distributing using a commercial Installer. How do I automatically add the user control to the Visual Studio Toolbox when my installer runs ?

Thanks

Answer 1

There is Toolbox controls installer. Check this tutorial from MSDN : Tutorial: Installing Controls By Using the Toolbox Controls Installer

This tutorial explains how to use the Toolbox Controls Installer (TCI). When you have finished this tutorial, you will have created full-featured installers for both Windows Forms controls and Web Forms controls that you can install into the Visual Studio Toolbox by using the Toolbox Controls Installer (TCI).

Answer 2

Visual Studio Toolbox Manager is one approach to check into, also this blog post has reference to how to go about it like the big component players, using the visual studio SDK, they also have some other options with sample code on that blog

Answer 3

I wrote this tutorial article discussing all the methods I know about so far:

Visual Studio Toolbox Control Integration

The Toolbox Controls Installer (TCI) seems to be most convenient one.

The Visual Studio Toolbox Manager on CodePlex is fine, but quite slow. I wrote a similar tool (available for download from the article) which deals with VS2012.

Finally, I wrote some notes about updating and uninstalling the controls.