I have a WPF project and a post build event which copy files from a folder outside of the solution into the output directory.
I want to publish my application with Clickonce publish. The only problem is that the copied files are not included in the publish or the manifest.
I tried using MageUI.exe , msbuild /target:publish from the visual studio cmd and even tried to change the project file by hand including a beforepublishevent but none of that worked.
I am open to suggestions, but what I want is to take the output folder and make the installer install the output files. (e.g. install the .net 4 framework and visual c++ runtime libs)
If you don't want them in the solution, but you do want them in ClickOnce then the only possibility is to use an external tool to create the ClickOnce manifests as you can't add non-project files to the ClickOnce output in Visual Studio.
There are two options I know of:
Use MageUI to manage your ClickOnce manifests. You can add additional files to your application in Mage.
You could use some software that I created and sell called ClickOnceMore (www.clickoncemore.net). ClickOnceMore will allow you to add all the files in one directory to your ClickOnce manifests by adding a single folder include. You can also then control which sub folder on the client they get deployed to. It was designed to make scenarios like this simple. You can download a free trial on the web site.
I hope it helps. Apologies for the marketing plug, but I do think ClickOnceMore can solve your problem perfectly.
Instead of copying the files through a post-build event, why don't you include them inside the project, and mark Copy to Output Directory = Copy if Newer?
If they are DLLs, you can add them as reference instead.
There are other options to create installers such as WiX+SharpSetup. It's much more flexible, but also more complicated, and takes more time to create simple installers.
Related
I've recently coded a little program to determine numbers in a picture and it is reliant on two libraries I've used. (DLLs)
Since my target computer is not allowed to install programs due to security reasons, I need to create a portable .exe.
.NET is installed on the target computer but for some reason VS still does not include the libraries I've used in the exe but instead creates an application folder with a setup.exe, some .DEPLOY files and an application manifest.
I am new to VS and .NET in general so this question could be easy to answer, but I'm asking since I've found nothing useful on StackOverflow neither on google.
You can simply build the application and copy your bin/Debug folder along, but that would still mean you need multiple files.
In order to merge all references into the executable, use ILMerge. Here is some help calling ILMerge.
Basically, after building, you should do something like this:
ilmerge /target:winexe /out:SelfContainedProgram.exe
Program.exe ClassLibrary1.dll ClassLibrary2.dll
There is just one file you need to send along.
One way to do this is to build your application in Release mode (You can pick from Debug or Release in the drop-down). Then go to C:\Projects\[ProjectName]\[ProjectName]\bin\Release (The location of your project folder may vary). You'll see a bunch of files but all you really need are the DLLs, executable, and the config if you used one. You won't have to do any setup if you keep the necessary files in the application's folder, just copy them all to a folder on the target computer, create a shortcut if you want then you're good to go.
You can just copy all your assemblies into any folder you want. Simply chose "Build" from within Visual Studio and copy the files from bin/debug to your destination-folder.
However you have to ensure that all (relative) paths (if existing) still work as you cannot be sure where the user of your program copies the files to.
One simple way could be to use 7zip Packager, it doesn't need any installer. However, VisualStudio method might be more reliable.
I encountered the same issue recently. ILMerge suggestion above is no longer supported. I found Fody.Costura as a modern replacement.
I have some library files needed for my application to work.
My application has a setup and deployment included.
I already know that in order for a library file to be added to the output directory of the application when installing, I just have to reference those libraries inside the .NET IDE before building... the only problem is that these libraries can't be referenced... So I need to be able to copy these libraries to the installation directory of my application... At the moment, I am copying these libraries manually...
Addendum
I also did try to add these library files as an Existing Item to my project and marked each library files' Copy to Output Directory to Copy if newer on their properties but still not getting the solution I want.
Update 1
Thanks for you help guys it helped me solve my problem, I managed to make the solutions you posted work except for one... #Matthew Watson's post.. I even managed to find a solution too so I wanted to share it with you also.
Heres what I did:
I opened the setup and deployment project in my application.
Under the Application Folder Tree, on it's right side, I right clicked..
then clicked Add..
then clicked File
and then browsed for the files I wanted to add to the installation directory
and click open.
But out of curiosity...I am still trying to make what #Matthew Watson posted work...
Update 2
I forgot to update this post yesterday, I already manage to make Matthew Watson's solution worked yesterday. Thank you again for all your help guys.
You can add files to your project and select their properties: "Build Action" as "Content" and "Copy to output directory" as "Copy Always" or Copy if Newer (the latter is preferable because otherwise the project rebuilds fully every time you build it).
Then those files will be copied to your output folder.
This is better than using a post build step because Visual Studio will know that the files are part of the project. (That affects things like ClickOnce applications which need to know what files to add to the clickonce data.)
You will also be more easily able to see which files are in the project because they will be listed with the source code files rather than hidden in a post-build step. And also Source Control can be used with them more easily.
Once you have added "Content" files to your project, you will be able to add them to a Visual Studio 2010 Setup and Deployment project as follows:
Go into your Setup project and add to your "Application Folder" output the Project Output called "Content Files". If you right-click the Content Files after adding them you can select "outputs" and see what it's going to copy.
Note that Setup and Deployment projects are NOT supported in Visual Studio 2012.
You can use Visual Studio Post Build Event - Copy to Relative Directory Location. Which are basically scripts that are executed on build of specified project.
So you can use it to copy binaries you need, before actually running your application.
I've built against the release profile and this creates an executable build within the release directory in my project.
How do I best distribute to clients from this executable? There are a lot of files within this folder which don't appear when installed through the installer, such as the mainifest and one called application.exe.xml (which is confusing when Windows hides the extension in Windows Explorer).
Are these all necessary? Can I just send the executable? Or will I need to send with all the files? Is there a way to build without all these files?
You must send the EXE file and any DLL file that you reference locally. If you use COM references and the like, you need to register them during the installation. The same thing for the GAC I think, but I haven't used that for stand-alone applications myself.
The application.exe.config file contains the application settings (a copy of app.config). If you don't use settings or the user doesn't typically care about them, you can omit the file, and it will use the default values you built the application with.
The vshost files are not needed (if you have them). They are used by Visual Studio's debugger. The .pdb files contain debug data used to facilitate DLL file to source matching. Unless you plan on attaching a debugger to the application, there is no point sending those.
Usually, in an XCopy deployment you have to deploy (literally copy all files deployment with no setup/installer program) the content of the output folder (like debug or release) without:
*.pdb - debug symbols
*.xml - xml documentation
?vshost? - Visual Studio hosting files
In fact, it anyway also depends on your specific application. As a developer, you need to know what you are producing; in case you are using an xml file which is not the result of the .NET documentation compiler, but a static file copied in the output folder, then do not forget to deploy it.
A last note: developers usually disable the option to hide file extensions in Windows Explorer ;-)
You need to understand what an installer does or why an installer is important.
An installer takes care of the basic environment. The installer can carry dependent assemblies/modules along with the application. It can also check if you need something before you run, like .NET on the target machine. It can also create the shortcuts on the desktop or start menu. Plus it also provides adequate options on the target machine to uninstall it.
If you wish to ship the executable alone, you might miss out some assemblies that the executable depends on. The target machine may or may not have the correct .NET version installed.
Use the program: HM NIS EDIT from HM Soft.
Build your project
Run NIS EDIT
Make a new script from the wizard (Ctrl + W)
Run all the steps
Select all the .dll and .exe files
Build a setup file
For some reason, we have a script that creates batch files to XCOPY our compiled assemblies, config files, and various other files to a network share for our beta testers. We do have an installer, but some don't have the permissions required to run the installer, or they're running over Citrix.
If you vomited all over your desk at the mentions of XCOPY and Citrix, use it as an excuse to go home early. You're welcome.
The code currently has hundreds of lines like:
CreateScripts(basePath, "Client", outputDir, FileType.EXE | FileType.DLL | FileType.XML | FileType.CONFIG);
It used to be worse, with 20 int parameters (one per file type) representing whether or not to copy that file type to the output directory.
These hundreds of lines create upload/download batch files with thousands of XCOPY lines. In our setup projects, we can reference things like "Primary output from Client" and "Content Files from Client". I'd love to be able to do that programmatically from a non-setup project, but I'm at a loss.
Obviously MS does it, either using an API or by parsing the .csproj files. How would I go about doing this? I'm just looking for a way to get a list of files for any of the setup categories, i.e.:
Primary Output
Localized Resources
Content Files
Documentation Files
EDIT:
I have a setup project like Hath suggested, and it's halfway to what I'm looking for. The only problem keeping that from being a perfect solution is that multiple projects depend on the same assemblies being in their own folder, and the setup will only copy the file once.
Example:
Projects Admin, Client, and Server all rely on ExceptionHandler.dll, and Admin and Client both rely on Util.dll, while Server does not. This is what I'm looking for:
Admin
Admin.exe
Admin.exe.config
ExceptionHandler.dll
Util.dll
Client
Client.exe
Client.exe.config
ExceptionHandler.dll
Util.dll
Server
Server.exe
Server.exe.config
ExceptionHandler.dll
Since the referenced assemblies are all the same, what I get is this:
Admin
Admin.exe
Admin.exe.config
ExceptionHandler.dll
Util.dll
Client
Client.exe
Client.exe.config
Server
Server.exe
Server.exe.config
This causes a FileNotFoundException when either Client or Server can't find one of the two DLLs it's expecting.
Is there a setup property I'm missing to make it always copy the output, even if it's duplicated elsewhere in another project's output?
EDIT AGAIN: All referenced DLLs are set to "Copy Local", and always have been. I found a decent article on using NAnt and XSLT to grab the list of files, so that may be a possible solution as well, as neouser99 suggested.
ACCEPTED SOLUTION: I'm pretty much back where I started. All .exe and .dll outputs are put into a "bin" directory in the setup project, loosely packed. The other per-application folders contain shortcuts to the executable in that directory.
The difference now is, I'm going to add a custom action to the installer to use reflection, enumerate the dependencies for each executable output, and copy the .exe and .dll files to the separate directories. Bit of a pain, as I just assumed there was a way to programmatically detect what files would be included via some setup library.
why not use another setup project and just set the 'Package files' setting to As Loose uncompressed files (setup project->properties)? then share the folder.. or something.
edit:
I see, you have 3 folders for your outputs. but the setup project only detects the ExceptionHandler.dll and Util.dll once, so it will just pick the first folder and put it in there.
You could do a setup project for each project - bit annoying maybe..
You could manually add in the dll's to the projects that are missing the assembly's
either by adding in the File by 'add file' or 'add assembly' or 'add project output' if you have those projects in the same solution.. (I doubt that's the case though).
or just dump all of them into one output directory...
Although it's designed as a build tool, you might find NAnt to be extremely useful in what you are talking about. The tasks (build, copy, move, delete, etc.) that you can define allow for very fine-grained file lookups, up to general, full folders. If you also incorporate NAnt into your build process, I think you could find that it helps out in more ways then one.
Another approach that has worked for me in the past is to add the shared resource (Assembly, DLL or project) as a reference to each of the Admin, Server and Client projects. Then open the properties panel for the referenced item in each project and set "Copy Local" to true.
Now when you build the projects, each will have its own instance of the Assembly copied into its output folder.
This should also cause the shared components added in this manner to be replicated in each of the output folders in the setup package.
A completely different approach could be to set them up as symbolic links on the network share. A symbolic link is basically a short-cut where the file-system hides the fact that it is a short-cut, so all other applications actually believes that the file has been copied (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_symbolic_link).
One advantage of this approach is that the file is updated immediately as the file changes and not only when you build your projects. So when you for instance save one of the config-files with a text-editor the update is applied immediately.
The following MSBuild script part can build your SLN file (you can replace it with .csproj) and will report a list of all projects that were build (Dlls, EXEs).
<MSBuild Projects="MySolution.sln" Targets="Clean; Rebuild" Properties="Configuration=$(BuildMode);">
<Output TaskParameter="TargetOutputs"
ItemName="AssembliesBuilt" />
</MSBuild>
Now, this doesn't really solve your problem, but it gets you a list of everything that was build. You also have copylocal, so you could probably just take AssembiesBuild and copy all DLL and .CONFIG files from there.
Example:
AssembliesBuild = c:\myproj\something1\build.dll
you'd go to c:\myproj\something1\ and simply search for all *.dll and *.config files and include them. You can do this pretty easily with MSBuild or powershell, if you have it installed. To output a XCOPY script from MSBuild, I think you'll need MSBuild contrib projct installed.
I have a simple C# console application developed on my local machine using VS2008 Pro. I want to know how to deploy this solution onto a network share folder?
A similar Java console program is already placed (as a JAR file) in the same network share folder. Users simply open command prompt, navigate to shared folder and type "java -jar programName.jar inputParameter1 inputParameter2"
How can I achieve the same with .NET?
You can copy the exe over yourself, go to the bin folder in the directory your source code is in and copy it there.
or you can click the BUILD menu and use the PUBLISH menu item. This will allow you to enter the path to your network share and visual studio will copy the built app to the folder for you.
If your application is really "simple", you should be able to just copy the files to a shared folder and run it from there. However, if your "simple" application tries to do things that are restricted by the permissions you might have to configure them with caspol. Assemblies loaded from a shared drive have much fewer permissions than the ones loaded from a local drive.
It would be mostly the same process as the Java program. To deploy, compile the program and copy the exe from the bin folder (along with any dependencies) to the network share.
To run the program users would open the command prompt, navigate to shared folder, and type "programName.exe inputParameter1 inputParameter2"
You can use Publish feature of VS. Note that you can change settings in the Publish section of the console application project to remove some features that you don't need. For instance the renaming of .dll and .exe files by appending the '.deploy' extension to the name of the files or publishing in a new 'version' folder each time. Go to "Project Properties"->"Publish" and remove "Automatically increment revision" checkbox at "Publish Version", click "Options..." button and clear all checkboxes there too.
Right click your project, select publish which will make an executable, you can put that in your shared drive, similarly users can go into the command prompt and run it and give some args.
In the exact same way assuming they have the proper dependencies installed (.net, 3rd party assemblies, etc). copy the bin folder then have them execute the exe file.
Take a look at ClickOnce deployment:
ClickOnce is a Microsoft technology
for deploying Windows Forms or Windows
Presentation Foundation-based
software, also called Smart clients.
It is similar to Java Web Start for
the Java Platform.
MSDN
Wikipedia