Is it possible to create a VB.Net application which users can just run without installing it first.
If not, is it possible in another .Net language.
If not, how IS it possible :)
PS: The application only has to run under Windows (>= XP).
If they have the .NET Framework installed (the version of it that you developed it), they only need the .exe. You can find the .exe file in the bin directory of your projects folder in your Visual Studio workspace.
If they do not have the framework installed, you'll need to produce an installation for them. It's extremely easy with Visual Studio by just creating a setup project in the same solution as your code.
As long as the user has the .net runtime installed, and your exe has any needed resources in the same folder (dll's, images, ect) theres no problem with that.
If you mean without installing the .net framework though, that won't be possible.
just build the program, and go into the (assuming the project name is app1) app1/app1/bin/debug/ dir. there should be a file there called app1.exe. this file is the compiled .exe from you project. any other computer will be able to run this without doing any installation (provided they have the .NET framework installed (it comes standard on any computer with an os > WinXP))
EDIT: If you were building with debug configuration, it would be app1/app1/bin/debug/, but if you were building with release configuration (which would probably be a better idea if you are distributing) the path would be app1/app1/bin/release/
If you mean running it without the .NET Framework, it used to be possible, but apparently the company's website is no longer in English so I have no idea what's happened to it.
EDIT: If you were building with debug configuration, it would be
app1/app1/bin/debug/, but if you were building with release
configuration (which would probably be a better idea if you are
distributing) the path would be app1/app1/bin/release/
I am developer and have no administration rights to live(production) network.
I had to find away to deploy an app without installation... and my app is self updating this cause other problems too....
The production network Computer check/monitors the file versions etc, so updating in the program files can not be done, where a MSI has been used for deployment.
Using this above I am able to copy and Run the App from the User Profile (where the user has full rights).
lets understand how program runs-
an .exe needs some function which are not inside the .exe, such as , for example substring() function. these predefined function resides in some .dll libraries.
when .exe is executed by user, .exe first finds the .dll and then the function inside that particular .dll.
.exe first looks within the current folder for that .dll
if not found then it searches that in PATHs. (PATH is Environment variable which value is a list of folders such as System32 etc.)
an .exe usually needs only 3 things - .exe itself, .dll which predefined function it is using, and some ActiveX controls(.ocx). apart from these 3, .exe only uses resources (such as icons etc).
lets focus on these 3(.exe, .dll, .ocx)
first you need to check what .dlls your .exe is using. you can easiely do this by using a dependency walker.
then make sure all these .dlls (that dependency walker is showing,or in other words- all these dlls whose functions your .exe needs) are either in current folder(in which your .exe resides) or in the PATHs.
if this step is done then your .exe has high chances to run whithout "installing".
the only problem is that some .dll and all of .ocx, needs to be registered first(means they have to have some kind of registry entry). they are not ready to use just by copying and pasting in current folder or PATHs.
but you can register these .dlls and .ocx's by using regsvr32 (with command line).
after that your .exe should not face any problem to run successfully.
hope you got the main concept.
Related
I am nearing deployment time and am at a loss at to which files to package and deploy when the day comes.
Can I just pull out the executable and be done with it? Or do I need the XML docs and vshost files/manifest files?
Also, the DLLs I am using are also accompanied by an XML document inside my /Release/ folder. Do I need those or can I just grab the DLL files?
Thanks.
At minimum, you need EXE + DLLs. If applicable, add a default config file as part of deployment.
You may want to include PDBs to help debugging.
You don't need XMLs.
For the development machine, if you're using all default controls from Visual Studio, you only need the .exe. Just install the targeted framework. If your app is running in .NET framework 4, then you only need to install framework 4 and your .exe alone will run fine. If you're using 3rd party controls, then you need the .DLL in the same folder you have your .exe, usually.
I've written a Windows program using the C API of Tcl/Tk to create a nice GUI. I've installed ActiveState ActiveTcl for the dependencies and everything compiles and runs fine. Compiling required me to link against the import libraries provided by ActiveTcl.
Now that i want to distribute this program i have to make a choice on how to handle the dependency on ActiveTcl. One option is to require ActiveTcl be installed before my program, while another is to just distribute the ActiveTcl DLL's that my program actually uses.
If i view my program using a Dependency Walker i can see that three ActiveTcl DLL's are used. tcl86.dll, tk86.dll and zlib1.dll. So then i tried to move the DLL's.
If i moved these DLL's to the C:\Windows folder or to the program's folder, the program no longer functions. After moving the DLL's and viewing the program in the dependency walker, i can see the DLL's are being found in these alternative locations but the program refuses to start. I don't even get an error.
Do any of you guys know why this might be the case? That the only time my program runs is if the DLL's are located in the installation directory of ActiveTcl (C:\Tcl\bin).
The DDL's had dependencies of other files that should exist in the same folder.
I'm not very experienced with deploying applications and i'm having an issue with my very small screen scrape application.
I use a project that handles all screen scrapes and i just call the functions from the dll(on dev machines at least). When i reference that dll from the directory, it works fine on my machine but installing and launching on another machine without the project crashes it immediately when it tries to access the class to instantiate the screen scrape object.
Perhaps my assumption of dll is incorrect but doesn't having the dll mean it incapsulates all the classes/references/etc in that project so it can be used elswhere without having to lug the whole project with it?
What could be going on with this dll?
The dll assembly encapsulates the project, but not its references. Anything that the project needs to reference must be available in the new environment as well, whether in the GAC (global assembly cache), the local directory, in a reference path, or wherever.
If you are using Visual Studio 2010 or earlier, you can use Setup Projects to nicely gather all necessary references and package them into an install package for you. There may still be complications that you will need to troubleshoot sometimes, but it simplifies your deployment effort. In Visual Studio 2012 and later, Setup Projects were dropped, but there are other options, like WIX and Install Shield. And that is a whole other topic with plenty of Q&A on this site.
This is driving me crazy. I have developed a .NET COM DLL that is used by a VB6 DLL wrapper in order to update and replace some legacy functions in an application.
I am now trying to remove the requirement to use regasm on client machines so have worked out how to do that on a test DLL which all works fine.
I branched the DLL just in case and added an app.manifest file. Everything else worked out fine and I got it all working. The manifest is embedded and Visual Studio 2012 generates a mydll.dll.manifest file in the release folder.
Then I went back to the original trunk and added an app.manifest file (no point in merging as there were no code changes). I copied the contents of the branch into the app.manifest file and built the release version. The manifest is embedded in the DLL but no mydll.dll.manifest file is generated.
I know that it's not strictly necessary to have the mydll.dll.manifest file but I'd like things to be consistent (and for some reason the test process doesn't produce the same results with the trunk version) so how can I force it to be created?
This is a VB.NET DLL project so it doesn't have (or I can't find) the 'Generate Manifest' property drop down mentioned in the first answer here. How can I set this? Or is there a way to set it by editing the project file directly?
References:
Original walkthrough article and some corrections.
Overview by Junfeng Zhang in two articles plus a useful tool
You are making a fairly common mistake. A reg-free COM manifest helps an application find a COM server without looking in the registry to locate the DLL. Embedding the manifest in the DLL is like trying to solve the chicken and egg problem, Windows cannot possibly find that manifest if it cannot locate the DLL first.
The manifest needs to be part of the client app. Which is tricky since it is VB6, it doesn't support embedding manifests in its executables.
You could tinker with the mt.exe tool, an SDK utility that supports embedding manifests in an executable. You'd have to run it by hand after building the VB6 binaries. That's unfun and very likely to cause trouble when you forget. It is in general not a joyful tool to use, documentation is meager, incomplete and unhelpful, a chronic problem with manifests.
The fall back is a separate app.exe.manifest file, what Windows will look for next when it cannot find a manifest embedded in the executable. Where "app.exe" must be renamed to the name of the VB6 program. The EXE, not the DLL. This now also gives you a chance to avoid having to register the VB6 DLL, presumably what you really want if you truly want to make your program run reg-free. The disadvantage is that it will not work when you debug your VB6 program, wrong EXE. You'd also need a vb6.exe.manifest, located in the VB6 install directory.
Needless to say perhaps, very hard to get ahead with VB6 here. It just wasn't made to help you do this, they didn't have a time machine in 1998.
I have to admit that I don't know VB at all, but in the case of C++ and C# Visual Studio projects I previously had to resort to calling mt.exe in a post-build step in order to get the DLL manifest I wanted. Maybe that workaround would work in your case as well?
I have a VB6 app that utilizes a non-activeX DLL (non-registering).
It's declared via the classic Public Declare Function "Function Name" Lib "Library.DLL" syntax.
On my dev machine (XP) it works fine but when I deploy to Vista or Win7 I'm constantly greeted with a Run Time Error 48 - File Not Found for the DLL in question.
I have tried copying that DLL to every directory I can think of including every environment path on the test machine and the app path too.
These are all 32-bit test environments so it's not a SysWow64 issue.
Possibly throwing a wrench into the mix is the fact that the application in question is an Outlook COM Addin.
I managed to install VB6 on Win7 and was able to run a tiny sample app that utilizes this DLL (outside of the Outlook process) so I know it works PROVIDED the DLL is located in App path. If I call App.Path from my DLL when I run it on the test environment it shows, to no surprise, my installation directory however the DLL is there.
I tried turning off UAC. I tried making the App.Path directory permissions open to everyone, still no dice.
According to the details you give, it looks like placing the DLL in the path of standard Add-in locations would help.
I believe the first place a DLL search looks is the directory that the EXE loaded from, so your DLL's App.Path won't be used.
Are you sure that you tried installing this DLL into System32? Into Windows?
Aside from that you should be ble to create a PATH (messy) or an isolation manifest for the calling code (VB6 if I'm following you) that specifies DLL Redirection to a relative path (i.e. a subfolder under the folder with your VB6 code in it).
See Dynamic-Link Library Search Order
You may want to check the DLL's own dependancies. You will get the same error if it couldn't load the DLL in question or some DLL 20 levels deep in the dependancy chain.