I am currently working on a WinForms app in Visual Studio 2019, which uses a USB to I2C adapter to read EEPROM register values from a device. The manufacturer of the adapter provides the driver for the device in a downloadable zip file on their website which contains the .inf and .sys files among other things. I would like to have it so when the end user installs the app, the driver is automatically installed as well. What is the best way to do this? I have a Setup project in my solution, which I can use to put the driver files in the application folder, but that doesn't mean the driver is actually set up.
I found one potential solution that used System.Configuration.Install, but my targeted framework at the moment is .NET core 3.1, which unlike .NET framework does not have that namespace. I am only expecting users to use Windows 10, so I theoretically could switch to .NET framework for that namespace if necessary. However, I don't know if that will break anything in the app or if that is the easiest way to go about this.
I am very new to deploying apps so I really don't know the best way to go about this. Any direction is appreciated.
There are third-party .net core ways of doing this, such as
Core.System.Configuration.Install
Porting of System.Configuration.Install for .NET Core. (.NET 4.0
version)
Use at your own risk
however, there are also oodles of installers that have this capabilities.
Lastly, this can also be done with powershell, P/invoke and I believe there was talk in github about releasing this source code however you will need to track that down and follow the trail yourself
Related
I have made an application using C# in windows forms. I am using Install shield 2010 to create a setup file for the application. It asks me what it should check for as prerequisites which it would check for before starting to install on any other device.
However, I do not know what I should include as prerequisites for my windows application. I do not know if it requires .net 4.5 or 4 or 3.5... I also had downloaded and included some references in the project and do not know if they are being included in the setup or not...
Please help
You need to look at the project properties of your winform app and see what version of the .NET framework you are building against. In some cases you can do things like compile against .NET 2.0 but then have an App.Config file that says 2.0 and 4.0 are supported runtimes. This gives you flexibility in choosing which if any .NET to redistribute.
From there you have to look at your dependencies (references) and there dependencies. It's possible that they require additional things such as C++ runtimes, database engines. For each of these you have to figure out if it's already part of windows, if a third party redistributable exists, can it be statically linked or privately deployed and so on.
There is no one simple answer. You just have to be familiar with your code base, what it requires and what the best practices are for each of those items.
I have a simple application made using C#.
Now how do I make it , such that it runs on all systems.
If a PC does not have .NET framework installed - it shouldsiliently install it with only the bare minimum requirements that the program needs.
Installing .NET framework - too big in size compared to many program , which is just a few kilobytes. Also is shoulf be silent and only if required.
Basically the application should be light and capable to run in all Windows systems.
Not interested in getting to Linux users.
Should I use Mono Project.
Else is there a way to get the bare minim .NET framework selectively pre-installed.
Please advise.
Thanks
Have a look at mkbundle. It will create a standalone executable, with no other dependencies. In particular it does not need neither the Mono runtime nor .NET to be installed in order to execute.
The size might still be a problem (it will likely be several megabytes, even compressed), so there is another tool to strip out everything you don't need from the assemblies: the monolinker.
Note that the size will likely not reach the kilobyte range even after doing all this.
You can do this with a lot of work and the help of the Mono framework. See Embedding Mono for more information.
All that considered, it would be much easier to use a boostrapper to get a version of the .NET Client Framework installed. But you're going to lose the ability to install silently or be in the "kilobytes" footprint.
Unfortunately you cant run a .NET program on a machine that does not have the .NET framework installed and the installer of the program could be made to download the framework automatically but not in .NET .
To run .net applications you need the .net framework installed, that should be either the full version or the limited client profile edition.
The easiest way is to create a setup project from VS and require the .net version you want... the installer should be able to install the .net framework from the internet so you are not required to ship it with the app, which you can do by the way from the installer.
Mono won't be different since it still needs to be installed on the system. Mono however has full AOT support, but I don't have any idea whether that would help you or not... it is still a huge overkill anyway.
If you need your app to be small and run on ANY windows without any dependencies, you should do in c/c++ or vb6 whose runtime ships with most windows versions.
I have been recently trying to deploy a C# application on a computer that does not have .NET installed.
I know that there have been many questions around the same topic here on StackOverflow. Here are a few of them, of which I read the responses to all:
Packaging up the .net framework with a .net application deployment
Run a .net application without installing .net client profile?
Run C# windows application in windows XP without installing .NET Framework
So all of the responses to the above questions state that it is impossible without specific software, etc. One software mentioned was the Salamander .NET Linker. The only problem with that is that I cannot seem to be able to run the application after it has been processed by Salamender. I understand that this in itself is impossible, as it requires the .NET virtual machine to run. However, in the past, I have made Java applications and along with them, I shipped the entire JVM. Surprisingly, they still worked. So the reason why this is not a duplicate of the above questions is because my true question is:
What items of the .NET framework would I need to package? If I do manage to package all, would placing them in the same directory as the application I'm running allow the application to run?
I found one solution to this, the Microsoft .NET Redist Package. The only problem with this is that it has a GUI of its own. Aside from that, it would be a perfect fit. So, could anyone tell me one of two things:
Is there a command-line .NET package, and if so, where do I download it?
If there isn't, or it would be impractical to do so, approximately what directories would I need to copy from the .NET installations?
I understand that these files and directories are system specific, and that my .NET installation may not work on your computer, but if C# is like Java, then this should be achievable. Is it? Size is not a limitation, it does not matter to me whether or not the application and all its files is 1GB, or if it is only 1MB.
If in case there is no other solution, I used Dependency Walker to check all the dependencies of my program. If I were to package most of them, would my application, in theory, work?
For .NET, you really must just install the appropriate .NET framework. The .NET framework installation does include command line options to allow for silent installs, such as:
dotnetfx35.exe /q /norestart
For details on the command line options, see the options for 3.5 and for .NET 4.0.
That being said, most installation packages will handle these details for you as part of the installation. Using a decent installer will take care of this dependency automatically.
Depending on the pieces of the .NET Framework you need, you can use Mono. It supports shipping the runtime without installing just like you would a JVM, or you can statically link against the binaries to create a native executable .
If you are planning to deploy your application (and presuming the setup process doesn't need to be too complex), you can simply create a Setup project in Visual Studio and then bootstrap the prerequisites (.NET framework, and other stuff you think you might need).
You can follow the steps described in these MSDN articles:
How to create a Setup project in Visual Studio
How to add prerequisites to a Setup project
A walkthrough is given in this CodeProject article.
For more complex deployment scenarios (such as installing device drivers along your app, or better localization support), I would recommend looking into WiX (Windows Installer XML) toolset. It's a toolset that builds Windows installation packages, which you configure using XML files inside Visual Studio. WiX also supports various bootstrapping scenarios.
This page covers the differences between VS Setup projects, WiX, and InstallShield.
Is there any way to make a WPF Browser Application prompt to install .NET Framework with ClickOnce like a regular installable WPF Application?.
Those publishing options are locked when the HostInBrowser property in the project file is set to True, which is necessary for the application i'm developing, however i need to make the installation of dependencies user friendly, and possibly from the .net framework installer already hosted in my server, as it would cut down greatly the use of bandwidth.
The program is intended to be used in intranet, as a "web page", by placing shortcuts on the desktop of each computer (which is done at the first run of the app), but most of the users don't have .NET Framework 4 installed.
is there any way to accomplish this without converting it to an installable wpf application?
Thanks in advance, Jesús.
No ClickOnce requires the .Net framework, because it's a component of it.
All ClickOnce applications require that the correct version of the .NET
Framework is installed on a computer before they can be run
You can however set a prerequisite which is a higher version of the framework, provided they have at least version 2.0 to begin with.
Commonly a bootstrapper written in managed code is used to overcome this limitation. You could use MSBuild for this, dotNetInstaller, or other third party tools. I've used dotNetInstaller a few times a recommend it, it's very flexible.
How do I create an app that is:
lightweight: I am guessing don't require .NET frameworks maybe?
portable: runs without installing and saves data in the app directory, so i can just move the folder or maybe even the exe?
this is just a personal experiment: i want to try create a simple todo list app that has the above attributes
I am thinking:
C#/WPF (but requires .NET framework, I can explore client profile thogh)
Appcelerator Titanium (i think this will be lightweight & good enough? I do not know if I can have a portable titanium app though)
It is almost portable if the target machines have .NET Framework installed.
NDepend is such a product, which is built against .NET 2.0 and runs fine on Windows Vista, Windows 7, and other Windows if you manually install .NET 2.0 before.
Personally, it is not hard to write an application launcher in native languages such as C++/Delphi to detect whether the target machine has .NET. If .NET is not yet installed, this launcher can display a warning or help install the framework automatically. (Even some installers allow you to do this.)
If you want to write it in C#, you either need the .NET framework or the Mono framework. Either way you need it. Thankfully .NET 2.0 is pretty ubiquitous.
By default, .NET uses xcopy deployment, so you can just copy the executable and any necessary DLLs around in a directory. It doesn't need to be "installed" unless you explicitly create external dependencies.
#jiewmeng, here i leave a few keys to build an portable application
If the application need save additional data like configuration files o data files , must be saved to the same folder of the exe application or an child folder of the application.
The application should not read/write configuration data to the Windows registry or in the %Appdata% folder.
avoid the use of external dependencies like ocx o dll files, that need to register in the system.
try to use an language wich makes native applications without framerworks dependence a good recomendation is use Delphi.
If you want to use .Net language, choose a version of .Net framework, that is in common use in most of the systems like the Microsoft .Net 2.0
Use Delphi, it's always portable and smaller