The need for an installer depends on the type of application you are working on. If you are creating a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app, then you don't need an installer, as the new deployment model makes installers obsolete. If you are creating a web application, then Microsoft suggest you either use XCopy deployment or the MSDeploy web deployment technology.

But when it comes to traditional Win32-style applications, Microsoft seems to be in a conflict over whether to include a project for creating installer programs with Visual Studio. The release of VS2012 marked the removal of the popular Visual Studio Installer project type, which continues to remains absent in VS2015. There is still a way to construct an installer though, as the third-party publisher InstallShield has an arrangement with Microsoft to make the InstallShield Limited Edition available to developers using VS2015 Professional or greater.

In this recipe, we will use InstallShield...