Installing Enterprise Developer for Eclipse in an Offline Environment

Enterprise Developer is typically installed on a machine which is connected to the internet. This makes it easier for the installers to access and download any prerequisites, and that the Enterprise Developer installer validates the required certificates.

However, to install in an offline environment, an administrator with internet access must prepare by ensuring that all of the required installers, certificates, and licenses are available to the offline machine. For Enterprise Developer for Eclipse, this includes the Visual Studio Build Tools and some Microsoft certificates.

1. Download Microsoft's Visual Studio Build Tools 2017 - click here.
2. Use the Visual Studio Build Tools installer to download the required layout files for the offline installation of Enterprise Developer. You can run the installer with the --add parameter that specifies the components to download, and with the --layout parameter which specifies the folder where the layout is created.

   The following table includes the mandatory components required within an installer. (These are the component names added using the --add parameter.)

   Component name	Display name
   Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.VCTools	Pack for desktop development with C++
   Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Windows10SDK.17763	Windows 10 SDK (10.0.17763.0) - for Visual Studio 2017

   To download these components and create a layout folder, run Microsoft's Build Tools with the following options:

   vs_buildtools__id.exe --layout c:\VSBuildToolsOffline --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.VCTools Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Windows10SDK.17763 --lang en-US
   

   Where c:\VSBuildToolsOffline is an example folder in which you can create the offline install cache.

3. Copy the c:\VSBuildToolsOffline folder to the offline machine on which you want to install Enterprise Developer.
4. The required Microsoft certificates are placed in the certificates sub-folder of the Visual Studio layout folder you created in the previous steps. For more information on how to install these, click here. Micro Focus recommends that you use the mmc.exe instructions (computer management console) to import all certificates from c:\VSBuildToolsOffline\certificates to "Trusted Root Certification Authorities" of the computer (and not to the current user).
5. Execute the Visual Studio Build Tools installer from the c:\VSBuildToolsOffline folder with the --noweb option as follows:

   c:\VSBuildToolsOffline\vs_BuildToolsid.exe --noweb
   		  

   This starts the Visual Studio installer.

6. Click Install and follow the wizard instructions to install the Build Tools.
7. Run the Enterprise Developer installation, appending the skipmstools=1 parameter.
8. License the product using the Micro Focus License Administration tool.