Is there any way to package a C# project that am working on in Visual Studio 2015 Community into a stand-alone executable that doesn't need any other files or VS/.NET dependencies? Thanks in advance.
If you are developing an application with .net, it will always need the .net dependencies. Depending on any libraries that you use, you will need them as dependencies as well. If you truly want a native single exe than there are some third party vendors that can do this. They make virtual applications that package the dependencies inside of the exe. They are not free and I have not had good luck with these, but worth a shot.
One example https://turbo.net/studio
Build your project in release and you can use the output exe from bin/Release folder as a standalone executable.
If it has dependencies on assemblies which are not part of .NET framework you also need to merge all referenced dll assemblies into one exe file using ilmerge.
In both cases, users needs to have .NET framework installed on their machine.
The bin, obj, properties, etc. directories are part of your source code project not your executable. To exe application gets created in the bin directory. If you build it in debug mode, you'll find it in the bin\Debug folder. If you build it in release mode, you will find it in the bin'Release directory, etc.
That exe file should be good to run in any other computer.
Related
I have C# application (.NET Framework 4.6.2) with WebApi projects which references System.Runtime.InteropServices.RuntimeInformation (v4.3.0) library through nuget package. See
Nuget package reference screen Package was auto-installed as a dependency of 'Microsoft.CodeAnalysis.Razor.2.2.0, Microsoft.DotNet.PlatformAbstractions.2.1.0'
This application was working fine (Builds from my localhost are ok) until I tried to do automatic builds from my teamcity server (different machine). For some reason builds of my app which are provided by teamcity will not start. I get error Could not load file or assembly 'System.Runtime.InteropServices.RuntimeInformation, Version=4.0.2.0...'
So I started to investigate and I found out this:
Builds from my localhost (bin/debug) contains lib System.Runtime.InteropServices.RuntimeInformation.dll (File version=4.6.26011.1, Date modified=10.8.2021) --this build works fine
Teamcity build contains lib System.Runtime.InteropServices.RuntimeInformation.dll (File version=4.6.24705.1, Date modified=11.5.2016) --this build is not working
Nuget package which was downloaded (..\packages\System.Runtime.InteropServices.RuntimeInformation.4.3.0) on both machines (localhost and teamcity server) contains System.Runtime.InteropServices.RuntimeInformation.dll (File version=4.6.24705.1, Date modified=11.5.2016)
And now I am stuck and literally dont know how to investigate it further. Questions I am asking myself:
How is it possible that my localhost builds contains this reference lib with file version 4.6.26011.1 when in my \packages\ folder this .dll contains file version 4.6.24705.1? Does msbuild maybe take this reference from different location? But from where? I swear I searched my computer and I did not found this library in version 4.6.26011.1 (which is apparently copied to bin/debug by msbuild).
Is there a way to monitor msbuild process and see from where it copies this .dll reference to my bin/debug/ folder on my localhost machine?
How to fix my references so the app runs fine?
21.6.2022 Edit:
Thanks to #mu88 comment I have managed to find out that this library is copied from this location: "C:\Program Files\JetBrains\JetBrains Rider 2021.2.2\tools\MSBuild\Microsoft\Microsoft.NET.Build.Extensions\net462\lib\System.Runtime.InteropServices.RuntimeInformation.dll" to my bin\debug. I have zero ideas why msbuild is using this path for this lib. (This is only library which is copied from this path)
--Additional info: I am using some AspNetCore references (e.g Kestrel, ..) so I am targeting .Net Standard 2.0. Could this relate? I am asking because my investigation lead to this issue: ms-build-extensions-file-corrupt-my-bin-web-api-folder. In this issue I have found other links to people having similiar problems like this. I just dont understand the solution there :(
So I managed to solve my problem. I had to install .NET SDK to Visual Studio Build Tools 2019 via Visual Studio Installer. Which done "some" magic and it created *MSBuild\Microsoft\Microsoft.NET.Build.Extensions* folder to my msbuild and now during the build process some System libraries are "overidden" and copied from this new location.
So even if I use nuget to download System lib then this package is not used during the build.
I did not manage to find any more info about the build process :( It would be nice if someone could explain this to me. I created a separate question for this here: What is Microsoft.NET.Build.Extensions and how does it work?.
I am migrating a medium-sized Win10 app (.NET Framework 4.8) to net5-windows. The solution contains about 30 projects.
While the migration process worked rather straightforward in Visual Studio 2019 (Version 16.8.3) the only problem remained to package everything in a self-contained exe. Instead of struggling with the project entries in VS, I am using the command-line method discussed by Scott Hanselmann in his blog. This also worked smooth and produced an exe of about 140MB size.
One issue remains: Not all of the system dll's are included in the exe. The following ones have to be copied manually to the directory of choice:
Without these DLLs the app does not work.
My question: What is the reason for this behavior, and how can these dll's be included in the self-contained exe?
To include a system DLLs into single file app you should use IncludeNativeLibrariesForSelfExtract property or /p:IncludeNativeLibrariesForSelfExtract=true switch for dotnet publish command, as mentioned in single file publish design document
i'm trying to obtain an executable file with only the necessary dlls in the release folder, unfortunately VS is putting in that folder even System dlls, that afaik are not supposed to be redistributed with the executable.
I'd like to know if there's a way to make VS add to the release folder only dlls the executable can not work without, the ones that are supposed to be redistributed.
Thank you.
Release folder:
These assemblies are shims for .Net Standard where the full framework had gaps. Based on the assemblies in that folder, I assume that your exe is targeting .net 4.6.x and you are consuming a .net standard library.
If you upgrade to .net 4.7.2 you will see the number of required System.* assemblies reduced greatly.
See this answer for more details: Why does my .NET Standard NuGet package trigger so many dependencies?
I'm assuming this is a dotnet core project. Use the "dotnet publish" command to create your deployment files (the screenshot looks like a VS build directory?). You might see more dlls than you're used too if you're coming to dotnet core from using the Windows frameworks previously, but it depends on the publish options you use.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tools/dotnet-publish
I know I'm not the first person to ask this question on Stack Overflow and I'm sure I won't be the last. But, after spending hours researching how to do this and then physically trying to do it, I'm near ready to give up.
I have a .NET Framework 4, C#, WinForms application that builds to an executable. I rely on many many many dlls. The dlls fall into multiple categories.
Libraries I have written with no dependencies of their own
Libraries I have written with dependencies on other libraries I've written
Libraries I have written with dependencies on third party dlls
Third party stand alone dlls
Third party dlls with their own dependencies on other dlls
So after I compile my application I have a directory with an executable and approximately 15 dlls.
I want to pack all the dlls into a single executable so that I can simply distribute a single executable.
I know that IlMerge is the typically suggested application to use for this, but I'm curious if there is something easier to use that is more intuitive and works accross both WinForms and WPF.
The problem here is that ILMerge only can merge .Net assemblies. Your file lame_enc.dll isn't a .Net assembly but a standard Windows dll and therefore can't be loaded by ILMerge.
To get around this you could embed lame_enc.dll in your assembly and then extract it when needed in your application. Check out this article for more info on that.
http://weblogs.asp.net/ralfw/archive/2007/02/04/single-assembly-deployment-of-managed-and-unmanaged-code.aspx
In the end, I went an entirely different direction.
I decided to use the Costura Visual Studio Extensions located here.
These extensions use a combination of two methods
Jeffrey Richter's suggestion of using embedded resources as a method of merging assemblies
Einar Egilsson's suggestion using cecil to create module initializers
What's nice here is that you simply install the extensions into Visual Studio. After doing that, for any project where you want to pack your DLLs into a single executable, simply select the project, click Project on the menu bar, Costura, Configure, and then OK. It will ask you to reload the project - click yes. Now whenever you build the project it will create just a single executable (or DLL if you are doing it on a library). Couldn't be more easy.
ILMerge only combines pure (not mixed-mode) CLR assemblies. It works by extracting all of the CIL modules and then relinking them into a single new assembly. Assembly resources are also recombined.
ILMerge cannot merge native executable code. lame_enc.dll is a native DLL file and does not contain any CIL modules, that's why you can't combine it.
If you want to pack your application into a single executable a workaround is to include lame_enc.dll as an assembly resource, then save lame_enc.dll to disk in a temp folder perhaps, and add the folder it was saved in to your application's PATH, so your [DllImport] runtime linker will be able to access it.
To address your exact issue, verify that the file C:\Release\lame_enc.dll exists and that it is in fact a .NET file. ILMerge can only merge .NET assemblies.
Now if you are only worried about distribution of your application, you may consider creating an installer to install all of the binaries, and not worry about merging them using ILMerge.
Another alternative to using ILMerge is to embed the binaries in an assembly as desribed here.
I have a console application and two class library projects.
The console application has to project references to the class library projects.
When I build, it generates DLLs for these two projects. Do I have to include these with my console applications exe file? Is there a way I can make it so I don't have to include these 2 dlls?
Ideally, I'd like to have a single exe.
You must include any referenced assemblies as they are dependencies of your application.
That being said, however, Microsoft offers a tool called ILMerge that will allow you combine the dependency assemblies with your executable to create one, all-inclusive, executable assembly that you can ship to customers.
Check out ILMerge.
You can merge the assemblies into one, using ilmerge, otherwise you'll have to deploy the exe file and the dlls.
e.g. you can run a command like
ilmerge /target:winexe /out:MyProg.exe Program.exe ClassLib1.dll ClassLib.dll
Visual Studio provides no built-in way to do this, so you'd have to run the above command manually,as a Post Build event, or add it manually to your .csproj file.
You should be able to accomplish by selecting your references and setting the "Copy Local" property to false.
Be careful with ILMerge and make sure you understand the performance implications of going this route.