i am publishing an app in vb.net. it's creating setup.exe and a folder called application files. i am told that setup.exe is stand alone and does not need any other files. is this right? because when i put setup.exe in a different directory it says that some files are missing.
If you're using the "Setup and Installation Package" project from within visual studio, then that's not the case. The actual setup files are the .MSI file and setup.exe is just a placeholder for the Windows Installer application.
If you're using ClickOnce, then you need the entire published directory (especially the manifest, as that tells the ClickOnce protocol where everything is at.
That said, other installer creation systems work differently.
Related
How to set the service version as the installer version, using wix?
How to set it by the installer's coding, NOT by GUI.
For example : running service creates a .exe file in the bin folder.
Versioning your application files should happen before building your installer. WiX just copies files to the destination and doesn't modify them in anyway. (That would break code signing if it did.)
I am creating an installation file using VS2019 which creates two files setup.exe and install.msi. Is it possible to bundle them together for easier distribution into one setup file. Previously I used iexpress to bundle them together and using custom.bat file to execute setup after extracting. Though this is an very old technique, Is their any more innovative way we can use directly from VS2019 ?
I found this guide which makes use of Advanced Installer through a Visual Studio extension. I was able to take two projects in a solution and package them into one .msi, which installs both of the project executables when ran.
You will need to download the "Advanced Installer" Visual Studio extension (see the "Extensions" menu item in Visual Studio), as well as install Advanced Installer itself, which can be found here (the extension will prompt you to download Advanced Installer if you attempt to use it without having it installed). All the extension does is make use of the Advanced Installer software, but through Visual Studio. Once you have it all configured, all you need to do is perform a build on the Advanced Installer project that you will need to add to your solution.
How can you publish a WinForm that uses a .dll extension into one .exe file? I'm using VB.NET on Visual Studio 2013.
I have tried several methods such as using only the program .exe file from both the Debug and Release folder but these didn't work in isolation - a runtime error happened every time a command from the extension was used, as if it didn't exist.
My problem is packaging the entire program into one file. I don't want to have to use ClickOnce applications because you can't use a custom logo and so it kinda looks bad. I'll use it if there's no alternative.
I realised that the answer was to use the setup.exe file when publishing. Also, changing the logo of a ClickOnce program is possible.
I am using Visual Studio 2010 and coding in VB.NET.
I have gone through the publish section in the program properties.
There is a Publish Location section and I have that set where I want,
but when you install the program, it never asks where you want to install it
and it installs in the the User AppData folder.
In the publish properties there is a section for Installation Folder URL.
But it only will allow a web url and not a file path.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
You are confusing ClickOnce setups (that's the Publish) and MSI setups (which require you to create a setup project to buold an MSI file). ClickOnce doesn't sound like what you need if you want files in the UserAppDataFolder location.
Background:
I always try to ensure the following tenet in my projects:
After a fresh checkout a developer should be able to do all project related tasks with solely the contents of the combined folders.
Obviously, this isn't always possible (e.g. Visual Studio for Windows development). However, I really dislike having to install any third-party libraries or tools that are specific a project like log4net, NHibernate, NUnit, etc. There are number of reasons for this including:
For a given development machine, you may work on several different projects, all which leverage different versions of the same third-party library or tool.
Minimizing the environment setup requirements makes setting up new developers or machines much easier
Facilitates easier maintenance of automated builds
Assumptions/Contraints
I am currently using WiX 3 beta, but if there is way for either 2.0 or 3.0 please respond
I am using Visual Studio 2005
The IDE syntax highlighting is not a requirement.
Question:
Is it possible to avoid local installation of the WiX toolset and use flat files instead? If so, please explain how.
See Also:
First, build your WiX installer:
Create a new WiX Installer Project in Visual Studio 2005.
Build your WiX XML accordingly.
Now, to integrate the WiX toolkit into your source tree:
Copy c:\Program Files\Windows Installer XML v3\bin to a sub-directory in your source tree. I used WiX\bin relative to my .wixproj file.
Copy c:\Program Files\MSBuild\WiX\v3.0\ to a subdirectory in your source tree. I used WiX\v3.0 relative to my .wixproj file.
Either add the following code or replace the line that follows:
<WixTargetsPath Condition=" '$(WixTargetsPath)' == ''>$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\WiX\v3.0\Wix.targets</WixTargetsPath>
With the following lines:
<WixToolPath>$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\WiX\bin\</WixToolPath>
<WixTasksPath>$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\WiX\v3.0\WixTasks.dll</WixTasksPath>
<WixTargetsPath>$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\WiX\v3.0\Wix.targets</WixTargetsPath>
As you can see, the WixToolPath, WixTasksPath and WixTargetsPath directives reflect the location of the folders I've instructed you to copy.
Rename your .wixproj to .csproj. This ensures that Visual Studio does not get confused by the .wixproj file but because the .wixproj is a valid MSBuild project, Visual Studio will be able to work with it.
Using this method, the WiX directory as described is about 9MB large.
I know with WiX 2, you can just download the executable files and the dll's to whatever directory your project is in. Then you create a .bat file to run candle.exe and light.exe with the parameters you need to build your installer.
That way, all your projects can have their own version of WiX with a disk drive hit of only about 4 megs each.
I'm not positive, but I think you can do the same with WiX 3.