If you currently make use of Visual Studio Setup Projects (.vdproj), you may want to start thinking about a transition plan for the future. As Buck Hodges stated on his blog yesterday (link), Visual Studio Setup Projects will not ship in the next release of Visual Studio.
He recommends (and I agree) looking into WiX – the same installer technology used to create the installation packages for Visual Studio and other miscellaneous Microsoft tools. If you’re interested in looking at other options, check out the MSDN page Choosing a Windows Installer Deployment Tool.
I, for one, am not sad to see the Visual Studio Setup Projects go by the wayside. However, I would like to see first-class support for WiX within Visual Studio.
Read the full details here.