Tweak MS's Visual Studio 2010 Installation

this year Microsoft releases its powerful product Visual Studio 2010.

Visual Studio supports different programming languages by means of language services, which allow the code editor and debugger to support (to varying degrees) nearly any programming language, provided a language-specific service exists.

In computing, Microsoft Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It can be used to develop console and graphical user interface applications along with Windows Forms applications, web sites, web applications, and web services in both native code together with managed code for all platforms supported by Microsoft Windows, Windows Mobile, Windows CE, .NET Framework, .NET Compact Framework and Microsoft Silverlight. [Source Wiki]


Isnt't it great?!!!
Yes it is.. but wait..

when you start the installation the setup takes away nearly 3GB in your base partition (usually C:)

Is there any way to install all of Visual Studio 2010 to a drive besides C:?


Yes, this problem can easily be tweaked and finally you can install Visual Studio 2010 Express somewhere besides C:

But how?
simple!!


The setup DVD contains a file Setup\baseline.dat. This is a large text file which stores information on where to install large chunks of the software.

You need to edit this text file and change the lines which say

DefaultPath=[ProgramFilesFolder]\VC\

...

DefaultPath=[ProgramFilesFolder]\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0

...

DefaultPath=[ProgramFilesFolder]\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE

to

DefaultPath=F:\Applications\VS2010\VC\

...

DefaultPath=F:\Applications\VS2010\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0

...

DefaultPath=F:\Applications\VS2010\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE

That will get most of the stuff off C partition.

If you want to save more space on your base drive you can also tweak on

DefaultPath=[WindowsFolder]\assembly

Its just this simple!!

heyy!! Its Obvious if you're installing from a DVD/iso you need to copy the entire contents of the DVD to a folder before editing baseline.dat, otherwise it will be read-only.