How to effectively use a Visual studio installer for building installations for application?

I am using Visual studio installer for my application. When I rebuild my application (for which setup project was created) I need to do a lot of manual work to create a new installation: in the application project set new version of the build. In the project setup I need to remove old e开发者_开发问答xe-file and to add new one. Also, all shortcuts should be recreated and icons should be chosen again. What am I doing wrong? Is there any human way to quickly build a new installation for my application.

Your deployment project should be in the same solution as your app, and then it can target the 'Primary Output' of your app's project rather than manually selecting the .exe file: each time that the project is built, it then uses the project output, so you don't need to do anything for an upgrade except to change the Version of the deployment project and build the solution in a configuration which is set to build the deployment project.