Web Platform becomes more and more the (only?) way to install tools in the world of Microsoft . It acts like a kind of Apple Store, letting you find and install quite easily your favorite apps but to do so you will need to have an Internet connection… or not!
Indeed, in some scenarios, you might not have access to internet, it was at least the case for me. My Dev box is running on the ESX Server of the company and being a server, you do not get internet access. My first thought was no internet, no web platform installer (or like we used to say in french “pas de bras pas de chocolat” but wait, there is a solution…
I was glad to find that Web Platform Installer provides an offline mode and I’ll explain how does it work.
The example will show you how to install the Office Tools for Visual Studio 2012.
1. Caching
Obviously, this step must be done from a computer that has access to internet.
In order to dump the required installer, I will need to know this ID. You can do that using the following command (you might need execute the command as administrator (Run as Administrator)) to dump the full list into C:\temp\dump.txt.
C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Web Platform Installer>WebPICMD.exe /List /ListOption:All > C:\temp\dump.txt
You will find “OfficeToolsForVS2012RTW” in the listing, this is the one we need. This ID will be used as follow for the caching:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Web Platform Installer>WebPICMD.exe /Offline /Products:OfficeToolsForVS2012RTW /Path: \\someShareDrive\WebPlatformInstallerOfflineCache
In this example, I cached the OfficeToolsForVS2012RTW into \\someShareDrive\WebPlatformInstallerOfflineCache
Note that the Path parameter must be a shared drive.
2. Installing
This step can be done from any computer (with or without access to internet)
To install the required product, run the following command:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Web Platform Installer>WebPiCmd.exe /Install /Products: OfficeToolsForVS2012RTW /XML: \\someShareDrive\WebPlatformInstallerOfflineCache\feeds\latest\webproductlist.xml
Hope it helps!