velopack/specs/Tools.md

Scenarios

At the end of the day, here's how a developer will use Squirrel:

1. Add the Squirrel package to your application
2. As part of the install for Squirrel, NuGet Package Build is enabled in the csproj file
3. The user edits the generated .nuspec to specify some details about their app
4. From the NuGet package console, run New-Release - this builds the world, and you end up with a $SolutionDir/Releases/ASSEMBLYNAME folder that has both a Squirrel release package as well as a Setup.exe

How does this work:

As part of adding Squirrel to your application, a targets file gets added to your csproj file. This targets file dumps all of the references in your application to the output directory in a simple text file, as well as a list of files marked as content.

Calling New-Release results in this process being kicked off:

1. Call $DTE to build the current project, including the NuGet packages
2. For the current project, run CreateReleasePackage.exe to build release and delta packages.
3. Create a Zip file consisting of update.exe and the latest full release from Releases.
4. Using Win32 API Abuse™, put that into setup.exe, a C++ bootstrapper application whose sole goal is to download .NET 4.5, install it, then run update.exe
5. Copy that to the Releases folder.