I have written a program on Visual Basic. In the debug folder, there are many files:
Database1.mdf
Database1_log.ldf
MyData.Designer.vb
MyData.xsc
MyData.xsd
MyData.xss
WindowsApplication1.exe
WindowsApplication1.config
WindowsApplication1.pdb
WindowsApplication1.vshost
WindowsApplication1.vshost.exe
WindowsApplication1.vshost.exe.manifest
WindowsApplication1.xml
I want to publish my program. Are all of those files necessary for the program? Which of them are used for my database?
Because I want to put a button in my program that backs up the database. Which files must be backed up?
First of all, you should publish the Release version of your software, not the debug version so the files will be a bit different. As for which files to publish, if you use the Setup project you will be able to select the files based upon what your application needs. For example, it looks like you are including database files with your application (Database1.mdf and Database1_log.ldf). You could add these files to the setup project.
The setup project will know to include your exe and your config file (unless you tell it not to) so you will be covered there. Here is a video and a written walkthrough of how to create a Setup project:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms241903.aspx
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lcue0jo41AM
As for your PDB files, these are the Program Database Files that are used for debugging (and should never be give to the customer/end user).
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms241903.aspx
As for backing up your database, back up the MDF and LDF files.
No, all of the files above are from your debug compile output. You can change what is output by changing your build configuration. Go to Build, Configuration Manager and switch to Release. It's also on the toolbar.
In general your ProjectName.exe (but not the .vshost.exe), .config (but not the .vshost.exe.config) and MDF/LDF files are needed for publishing. You also have an XSD File which will also be needed.
The MDF/LDF files are your database.
Related
My VStudio is 2019 Community, the application is an old VB Windows/Forms app being brought forward from .Net-3.5-ish to .Net-5.
Under .Net-4.8 or earlier, using the namespace System.Deployment.Application, one could access ApplicationDeployment.DataDirectory to locate that artificially-generated directory in \Users\Username\AppData\Local\Apps\2.0\... that a 1-click installation would create and populate with data files from the Project Build/Publish.
Under .Net-5, I believe that particular set of functions has been taken out - yet the ClickOnce installer still places Data files there. How do I programmatically locate that directory? The Application Path can be located from System.AppContext.BaseDirectory, but that doesn't help in locating the data.
This app, an old bit of VB code, has a large number of application data files that need to be installed along with the code. As there are more than 40 of them, we've kept them in their own \Data directory, which is included in the Project, is under Git control to keep their versions aligned with their code...
In an uninstalled app, we could keep this \Data directory adjacent to the executable, and find it easily at runtime: but with a ClickOnce installed app, that falls apart. In the Publish configuration, all the data files are identified, with Group=Required, Publish Status=DataFile.
Can I either:
Easily configure the 1-click installer to place our \Data directory and its contents into one of the standard \Local\Appname or \Roaming\Appname directories that seem to also get created, but left empty? Those can easily be located at runtime.
Easily construct at runtime the path to that obscure data directory that 1-click normally creates and uses for data?
Cheers, and Thanks! Bob
I have a project that need to run in a pen drive, the content is updated daily, and i need a automated way to generate a single file (.exe) to be downloaded by users.
I use this tool https://github.com/mllrsohn/node-webkit-builder, but when build for windows, the build generate multiple files ( dlls, dat ,exe ).
This break my automation because the content need to be downloaded (single file).
Any help?
As far as I know, it can't. You could try making a 7zip SFX archive and running your own program instead of an installer.
This needs to create temporal files when run (which are deleted when the program quits) and I don't think you can remove the initial prompt. If you're okay with that, it might be what you need.
Edit: You can get the necessary SFX modules here.
I'm creating a WIX installer for a C# application.
In the application I use System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[Setting1] to get settings.
My question is, where must I place the program.exe.config file on the machine in order for it to work?
I can't place it with the program in ProgramFiles directory, since those files are read-only.
I tried:
Configuration config = ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration(ConfigurationUserLevel.PerUserRoamingAndLocal);
config.AppSettings.Settings[Config1].Value = "Value1";
config.Save();
Unfortunately I don't know where it's looking.
Thanks your replies, Trevy
It should be in the same folder of the program.exe. Use wix to copy both program.exe and program.exe.config to the required folder.
If you need to edit the configuration file during the installation you will need to do it using a custom action in wix. Make sure you pass the file path to the custom action and write the code to read the configurations in that file and edit.
The problem isn't that the files there are readonly - the problem is that you are trying to update files in the Program Files folder with your config.Save, and you can't do that if you are a limited user, and you are always limited (even if you are admin) unless you elevate. The short answer is that:
If your app routinely updates files in restricted areas then it probably needs elevation, so give it an elevation manifest.
If however you require you app to be used by limited users and allow them to update that config file then don't install to Program Files. Choose User Appdata folder, for example. Windows is probably using your config file during program startup, so you can't separate it from the exe.
When I was creating an installer for my app, I found I couldn’t save my settings.
The reason is because the Program Files repository, from a practical point of view, is read-only (Applications should never run with elevated permissions). When installing a program, the only time we modify the MyApp.exe.config file is at installation/upgrade/repair time.
The config file has many sections. One of them is userSettings. This is where we store any data we need to modify during the lifetime of the application. When run for the first time, Windows creates a hidden file in the user’s AppData folder. That is why we can save user settings, even though the config file is in the same directory as the MyApp.exe
So the answer is, if we run into permission errors when trying to save our settings it means we are writing our settings to the wrong section of the config file. We need to place it in the userSettings section and nowhere else.
For convenience, Visual Studios has a settings editor (the settings tab of the properties page). It allows you to create strongly typed user and application settings. The generated class lets you save user settings, but not application settings for the above reasons.
I want to start using Mercurial on a VB.Net project, but I'm not sure which files should I add. Do I include the Project.sln file, bin/ and obj/ folders?
I would recommend using the hgignore detailed in this SO post
there is one that has 100+ up votes that would be a good starting point
With every source control, you should only include source files (i.e. files that are not generated during the build process), and the complete set of files necessary to build a solution. This does include the .sln file (for ease of use of the project in Visual Studio) but not the bin and obj folders, nor (usually) the user-specific settings (.suo), nor auto-generated files that can be re-generated.
A good rule of thumb is to only include things that you cannot easily regenerate. So, source code obviously meets this role and so does resources like images, sounds, and other data you need. Objects and the actual binary you generate from the source code usually are easy to get again and generally do not need to go in.
As for the sln file, if you will be making edits to the sln file and that's how others are to build the project, then you probably want to include that as well. If you generating the sln file from some other process (e.g., a script generates the sln and then builds it from that), then it's probably a good idea to leave that out.
Here's an MSDN article called Introducing Source Control. It lists files you can and cannot add to source control.
I have a project where I create a JAR which contains a bunch of classes with main() plus a set of scripts which set the environment to invoke them. Most of those are long running processes which log a lot (~10-20GB).
This means I have a pretty complex log4j.xml file which, being in src/main/resources/, goes into the JAR. When something breaks in the production system, I'd like to modify the logging on the fly for a single run.
So I came up with the idea to have a conf/ directory on the production and put that into the classpath, first. Then, I thought that it would be great if M2 would put the config files in there (instead of the JAR). But that would overwrite any manual changes during an automated deployment which I strongly dislike. I'm also not fond of timestamps and things like that.
So my next ideas was this: M2 should leave the config files in the JAR but create copies of the files with the name *.tpl in the conf/ directory. The admin could then copy a template to the basename to override the files in the JARs. .tpl-Files would be overwritten but that wouldn't hurt. Admins would have full control over which version of the log was active and they could run a diff to see whether any important changes were made.
Now the question: Has someone seen a plugin which automates this process? That is which creates a conf/ directory with all or a selected subset of everything in src/main/resources/ and which renames the files?
Best practice in Maven handling config files is to place them in a separate conf directory, and pack them in a binary assembly using the assembly plugin. Placing configuration files, like log4j.xml in the src/main/resources doesn't make sense, since it is not a true application resource, but more of a configuration file.
We cope with the overwriting, by packing the configuration files with the posfix .def. For example: myapp.properties is packed into the assembly as myapp.properties.def. When the person who uses the assembly unpacks it, it will not overwrite his original files. After unpacking he simply merges them by an external tool (we use meld in Fedora Core).
I may be missing something and this doesn't answer directly the question but did you consider producing a zip assembly of the exploded content of required artifacts (to be unzipped on the target environment)?
Sounds like you're attacking the problem the wrong way. Why not just run the application with -Dlog4j.configuration=/some/where/my-log4j.properties? If you want, you can add a command line flag to main() which invokes the PropertyConfigurator directly.