I am going to publish a C# windows form application project.
I have a folder named "Reports" Containing some report file.
when I publish the project , my application cannot find the path of reports.
How can I publish my Reports inside the project?
From solution explorer, choose each file that you need to include in the publish and in the properties of the file set Copy to Output Directory to true. This way your files will be included in bin\debug folder of your application in their current folder names.
Then if you want to use Publish command, go to properties of the project, in publish tab, click on Application Files and check Show All Files and change the Publish Status of the files you need to Include.
Pay attention, if your file's Build Action is Embedded Resource then you don't need to do anything else to include in the publish because it's included (embedded) in resources of your application.
Related
I was wondering if someone could please help me with something.
The main idea is that I want to have a .NET Framework Console App, which is build and packaged into a single file (an archive or something similar, like a jar file in the java world, containing all the referenced .dll files, sources files and additional project files) that i can deploy on another machine.
I've build an Console app using .NET 4.7.2 which is receiving data from a remote server and it pushes it to RabbitMQ. I use a .p12 file to authenticate to RMQ, which i keep stored in a sub-folder in my app called "Others".
When I run it from Visual Studio 2019 it works, but when I try either to release it and run it from that folder or to install it on my windows 10 machine it does not work anymore. It gives me the following exception :
RabbitMQ.Client.Exceptions.BrokerUnreachableException: None of the specified endpoints were reachable ---> System.AggregateException: One or more errors occurred. ---> System.Security.Cryptography.CryptographicException: The system cannot find the path specified.
...
When I publish the app, via the publish window, I select an output folder and I get the following files and folders :
(folder) Application Files
(file) setup, type of file - Application.exe (.application)
(file) ConsoleApp, type of file - Application Manifest (.application)
The RabbitMQ .dll file, which contains the RabbitMQ Client is located inside the folder "Application Files\ConsoleApp_1_0_0_13" together with other .dll files and a subfolder ("XMLRequest") but does not contain the other subfolders of my project.
I don't have the possibility to add these subfolders, where my .p12 key is located, i.e. "Others", in the publish screen of the application.
The other case when it does not work is when I to copy the whole "Release" subfolder into another location and just run the ConsoleApp.exe from there. I get the same error message.
Does anyone have an idea ?
Thanks !
Try following:
Open the project in Visual Studio
Go to Solution Explorer --> Click on Project --> Click "Show All Files" menu in Solution Explorer Menu
All the folders in your project will appear with dotted border in your project files tree
Right Click your folder and click "Include In Project"
Navigate to your file by expanding your folder in Solution Explorer
Right click file and click "Properties"
In Properties windows select "Copy always" for "Copy to Output Directory"
Performing above steps will cause Visual Studio to copy your entire folder to output (Debug and Release) directory.
There is also another option to publish required files during build and release process. Right click your required files and click properties. In the properties window set appropriate value for Build Action property to the value that you need. Following documentation describes when to use which Build Action Values.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/ide/build-actions?view=vs-2019
Packaging your app as a single .exe file
If you want your .NET Framework Console App, to be packaged into a single file, then I would take a look at the nuget package Costura.Fody. It will package up all the projects DLLs into a single .exe for you. I use it all the time.
All you need to do is add the nuget package to your project like this:
PM> Install-Package Fody
PM> Install-Package Costura.Fody
and out will pop a single .exe
Embedding Resource Files - Option #1
If you want to include files in your deployment, what I have done in the past is embed them in the exe themselves and then extract them when the app runs.
To do this, add the files to your project as normal:
Then right-click the file and select "properties" and set the build action to be an "embedded resource".
This will alow you extract the file later on, when the program is running. With this setup you could have any number of resource files setup in the app.
Then on startup of the app, you can extract the embedded resource to a file on disk using a function like this:
public static string GetEmbeddedResource(string resourceName)
{
string resourceContents = "";
try
{
string[] names = Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().GetManifestResourceNames();
string resource = "";
foreach (string str in names)
{
if (str.ToLower().Contains(resourceName.ToLower()) == true)
{
resource = str;
break;
}
}
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(resource) == false)
{
using (StreamReader sreader = new StreamReader(Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().GetManifestResourceStream(resource), Encoding.Default))
{
resourceContents = sreader.ReadToEnd();
}
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
throw;
}
return resourceContents;
}
with the usage of the above function looking like this:
var resource = GetEmbeddedResource("SomeFile.txt");
and then you can write the file to anywhere you need it on disk.
Embedding Resource Files - Option #2
The other option would be to copy the embedded resource to the output folder but then that means you wont have a single .exe file if you are manually copying this from machine to machine.
Embedding Resource Files - Option #3
If you are using ClickOnce technology to deploy your app, which it looks like you are, then when you go to the publish tab, if you select the "Application Files"
you can then choose which files to include in the deployment as seen here.
I have this WinForms application that uses an external dll file (Winppla.dll) so I can print tags in my Argox printer. Since I cannot add the dll file as a reference to the project, I use the command [DllImport("Winppla.dll")] on my class.
When I run the project in Visual Studio, it works perfectly.
Then I published my application using ClickOnce and when I try to run the application, I get the message error saying that the Winppla.dll could not be found, even though I am running it on my machine.
I tried to:
copy the file to the bin folder of the project before publishing
copy the file to the packages folder of the application before publishing
copy the file to the latest version folder on the Application Files folder (on the publishing location of the application)
add the file as a resource on the project
add a folder with the file as a Reference Path on the project
but none of these worked.
This project also uses SAP CrystalReports, and it works just fine.
Any ideas about how to make it work?
Following #Bearcat9425 instructions in the comments section of the question, I finally solved the problem:
Copy the file to the project folder and include it on the project
(on Solution Explorer, click on 'Show All Files', then right-click in the file and select 'Include In Project')
Mark the file as one of the application files on my publish tab
(right-click on my project and select 'Properties', then go to Publish tab and click on 'Application Files' and make sure the Winppla.dll is marked as 'Include')
Copy the Winppla.dll file to a shared folder in our server (I placed it on the same folder where I placed the setup of my application)
On each DllImport command write the complete path to the file shared location: [DllImport(#"\\the-path-on-the-server\Winppla.dll")]
Publish!
Let's say you create a C# console application, in Visual Studio, and within the application you create a folder called "Content". How would you force the project to include this folder during the build?
What I mean by this, is I want this "Content" folder to be present in /bin/Debug when I build the project. Currently, this new "Content" folder is not being outputted/created in the /bin/Debug folder.
Right click on the project, select Properties > Build Events, then put the following script in the Post-build event command line:
xcopy /E "$(ProjectDir)\Content" "$(TargetDir)\Content\*"
Screenshot:
This script is stored in your .csproj file, so the build will work in the TFS Build Agent as well.
For each file within your Content folder, you should be able to set the Copy to Output Directory property to Copy Always, in the Properties panel.
I don't think you can apply this property to a folder directly, so if you're only looking to include blank folder, it might just be easier to get the console app to create the blank folder you require at runtime.
If you have files in the folder, you would just set "Copy to Output Directory" to "Copy Always". If you don't really have any files, I usually just add a ReadMe.txt
I have a Service1.svc file that is a normal WCF service. If I deploy the WCF project it will happily copy the Service1.svc file along with the binaries and the other files. So far, so good. What I want is, based on the selected build configuration, or some other trick, to publish different contents for the Service1.svc file.
Let's say I have a Service1.Conf1.svc file and a Service1.Conf2.svc file and two configurations (like Debug or Release) that are named Conf1 and Conf2. When I click publish and have the Conf1 configuration selected, I want the publish folder to have a virtually created Service1.svc file whose contents are from Service1.Conf1.svc. When I click publish and have the Conf2 configuration selected, I want the publish folder to have a virtually created Service1.svc file whose contents are from Service1.Conf2.svc.
I would like to have this for the publish action, not the build action (which could be achievable by a post-build or pre-build event). The main purpose is to adjust the contents of the Service1.svc file according to the publish environment.
Any ideas?
We took a different approach and generate all required config/svc files for all possible installs (using TT file generation) and let the installer copy the correct configs/svc files (based on user selection during install).
The names of the files are constructed by inserting the target platform name into the standard name e.g web.local.config, web.dev.config, web.test.config etc
This way you can give one installer to anyone from any department. They just choose the platform.
Hi how do i publish the files from my bin folder using clickonce?
i successfully copied a folder of .sql script to the bin folder using the Build Events xcopy "$(ProjectDir)\..\project.Sql\AlterProductionServer" "$(TargetDir)\AlterProductionServer" /i /y
My purpose for doing that is to ask the system to check for any database script changes on startup. The system will check the scripts from the bin folder. The reason i xcopy to the bin so that when deploy, my client pc will read it from the same location too. If found, then it will run the .sql scripts to update the database first before running the system.
However, when i clicked on Publish - > Application Files, i do not see the AlterProductionServer folder which contain .sql files that i have already copied to the bin appear for me to choose to Include.
please advice.
When publishing via ClickOnce from within the Visual Studio IDE, it will only offer files from the project/solution, not from the file system. You could add your .sql file to the project, set the build action to Content and specify that it be copied to the output directory. This removes the need for your xcopy build action and makes VS aware of the importance of the file.
If it will still not show in the Application Files section after a rebuild, you may have to look at the prospect of writing your own application/deployment manifest files (XML) and using the command-line ClickOnce utilities to publish your solution. I found this was necessary when including items in my ClickOnce distribution which were not dependencies of the main project.