I made a WPF program which uses SQLite. And by using Visual Studio 2012, it generates both Debug and Release version exe file. When I go to Debug or Release directory and run my exe file, e.g. MultiStart.exe, it can run normally.
But if I copy the MultiStart.exe to my Desktop and try to run it, it failed.
By several tests, I found that I also need to copy files MultiStart.exe.config and System.Data.SQLite.dll to my Desktop. And then it can run now.
But why? Do we have better solution so that I can make it run without addition files?
Thanks!
Why my WPF program cannot run without Visual Studio?
The question title is not really accurate since it's not really related Visual Studio. MultiStart.exe is dependent on configuration (MultiStart.exe.config) as well as other assemblies (System.Data.SQLite.dll). Without these dependencies the application cannot run (because that is how .NET works).
WPF doesn't necessarily need a config file to run so the question is what is in your config file that the application needs. It might be possible to move this configuration information into the code (e.g. connection string) and remove the app.config but then the values will be hard coded in the application.
In terms of dependent assemblies, instead of deploying them it is possible to embed them as resources and then use the AppDomain.AssemblyResolve Event to read the assembly from a resource (see Embedding assemblies inside another assembly for an example).
Another approach instead of embedding assemblies as resources is to merge them into one assembly. ILMerge is a popular choice for merging assemblies but I read that it can have issues with WPF assemblies (not sure if that applies to you). See Merging dlls into a single .exe with wpf for some other ideas for merging assemblies with WPF.
Note that setting PATH variables does not work because .NET does not use the PATH for resolving assemblies -- see How the Runtime Locates Assemblies for the details.
Another, option instead of copying the MultiStart.exe to the desktop is to use a shortcut on the desktop that links to the appropriate directory. Perhaps that is a simpler solution
You can also use ILMerge to merge all dependencies into single .exe file to simplify distributiuon of your application.
More detaiils on ILMerge can be found here: ILMerge on CodeProject
Example of usage: ilmerge /target:winexe /out:YourDestinationApp.exe
YourCurrentProgram.exe System.Data.SQLite.dll
Better solution that i used to do with my windows form apps is, Copy the entire folder, which contains supporting files. place it where you want. then create a shortcut of your .exe on your desktop. That always worked for me.
Because you are missing some dependency. You can open your config file and set the dependency...but I wouldn't recommend you to change config file manually.
You can also copy the dependent dll in system32 folder. ..but its only a trick because exe first search dlls in current folder than system 32 folder.
Because you're missing things from your PATH. Visual Studio is probably set to copy DLLs to the target directory on build.
You're almost certainly pulling in external libraries. Some of these are part of .NET, while others are packaged in libraries in specific folders. When you start your exe, it looks in your PATH and the current folder for everything (which includes all DLLs Visual Studio copied).
When you moved the exe to the desktop, suddenly it had no idea where those DLLs are. You haven't specifically added them to your PATH, and they are no longer in the current folder. This is why copying those DLLs to your desktop magically made them work.
Unless you stop use SQLite, there is not a way for you to not need that DLL (there are lots of ways to package/reference it though).
Related
I developed a small project using C# and got everything working perfectly.
The only problem is that this app will be regularly sent via emails, therefore I'm trying to assemble all the files as one executable. The user will only have to open and see one executable, which will load the needed files and start the application.
The app does not use any external libraries. The only .dll file is for the IWshRuntimeLibrary.
The files that need to be assembled:
Note that I know that some files can be removed (svhost etc.). However this won't help because I'll still have more than one file. Also I've tried some free assemblers online but none of them worked.
In Solution Explorer, select the reference of Interop.IWshRunctime... and in the property window, change the value of Embed Interop Types to True.
This will not generate a separate dll for Interop Types.
PS: This is not a generic solution, but works with Interop Type only.
I've used https://github.com/Fody/Costura in the past. Nuget install Install-Package Costura.Fody (https://www.nuget.org/packages/Costura.Fody/)
Description about what it does from the source:
Take all assemblies (and pdbs) that have been marked as "Copy Local" and embed them as resources in the target assembly.
Actually you are looking for a method to merge some assemblies and resources into one executable file.
Custora.Fody, ILMerge, Obfuscators with assembly merging feature are some examples that can be used for this purpose.
You can find some answers here:
Embedding DLLs in a compiled executable
How to merge multiple assemblies into one?
List of obfuscators for .NET
If this is not about security reason, I would create the directory structure as follow:
- root
└ Startup.bat
└ lib
└ DiagnosticsSwitch.exe
└ DiagnosticsSwitch.exe.config
└ DiagnosticsSwitch.exe.manifest
└ Interop.IWshRuntimeLibrary.dll
And inside the Startup.bat
"lib/DiagnosticsSwitch.exe"
I have two applications which will be installed by a single executable. The problem I'm facing is that one of them uses a .dll. And whenever the IExpress package tries to run the first executable it says that the .dll could not be found, even tough I added the .dll inside and outside the package.
There is any way to make it work with IExpress, which has the required characteristics?
There is any alternative to my problem, as a similar software, for instance?
This sounds vaguely similar to this question:
Iexpress is extracting to %temp% folder... How do I prevent this?
As I mentioned in my answer, check: (1) is long file name (LFN) support enabled? and (2) is the .dll actually in the archive?
If checking those things doesn't resolve it, I would use Process Monitor to see which directories the executable is searching to locate the .dll file. It should ideally be looking in the extraction directory (eg %temp%\IXP000.TMP), since that's the current directory when the executable is running.
Of course there are several other utilities that do what IExpress does that you might try instead: 7-Zip, Inno Setup, NSIS, WinRAR, WiX – just to name a few.
I wrote an EXE that uses a third party dll and a template excel document. Anytime someone uses it they have to copy all three files (which is a pain).
Is there any way I can package everything that is needed into the EXE so there is only one file to worry about?
This is something that ilmerge is used for, atleast for combining assemblies. There is more information here and here.
There are several known problems with this though.
Yes - drag it into your project resources (My Project > Resources tab) and from there you can access it using global::Resources.resourceFile (I think - that might not be the right syntax, an alternative is here) as a byte stream and write it locally from there.
You can add files to your project in visual studio and set Build Action to None and Copy to Output directory to Copy always.
or
You can add these files to assembly resources. Adding and Editing Resources (Visual C#)
I suggest doing the first.
Also, for 3rd party dll: set Copy Local to true for the reference.
After you have your project set like this. Create setup project in VS and it will make one exe as you want.
How to: Create or Add a Setup Project
Software installation is a pain, but I think you can get away with an xcopy style deployment by using the compression tool of your choice (like winzip) and creating a self extracting executable.
We have a solution comprising of a windows application and various library files. Not all of the library files are referenced by the main windows application however we would like to have all the library files included in the output build folder "bin".
Obviously one solution is to simply reference every single library from the Windows application however we would like to avoid any unnecessary referencing.
How can we include additional files into our build folder?
This is a C# project.
You can always use the pre-build or post-build events in the project settings to copy the additional files.
You can do this simply by doing a bunch of copy source target, or you could even be fancy and write an nmake file. You do have to maintain the list of source files however...
Edit:
One other thought. Your assumption is that this is "unnecessary referencing". However, if your application depends on these assemblies to run, whether or not they are compile time references, then don't these dependencies become "necessary" references? In that case, isn't adding them as references and letting Studio's build system work for you the best (and simplest) approach?
The solution was to change the build location for all "libraries" within the solution to the main output "bin" location. The main Windows application only references the libraries that it depends upon however all the libraries are built to the one "common" location.
Thanks to Nader Shirazie for help with this question.
It's a beginners question, but...
Image of dll reference and dll included in project file http://a3.vox.com/6a00c2251e5b66549d00e398ca81eb0003-pi
If you look at the image above, there is the "Bass.Net" dll added as reference and also directly as file in the project.
Can someone tell me what's the point of doing that?
No reason, really. It could be that Visual Studio is set to display files not in the project (hard to tell from the picture) and the dll's happen to be in the main directory. The text is pretty clear that the extra files are
bass.dll
bassenc.dll
lame.exe
The .net one happens to be with the others in the same directory and you need to add it as a reference.
Within Windows, a DLL is a dynamic link library, which packages a set of programmatic functionality together. In this example, bass.dll exposes the features and functionality relevant to audio processing through this file (and any files it depends on). In order to use this functionality, you need the reference in the solution, so that Visual Studio can link it at compile time. The DLL will then typically be copied to your output directory when the application is built.
That's all that is necessary to get the code to work properly, the rest is really just preference or convention. Some people prefer to have all the files that exist in the project directory in the solution, so that the Solution Explorer reflects the file system. Typically you will want to have libraries your application depends on somewhere in your solution directory hierarchy so that the entire application is packaged together (making source code control use easier, for instance). You won't want to put this library in the BIN directory or any directory that Visual Studio generates, though, to avoid accidental deletions. In any event, having the reference is the important part, the file being in the project or solution is not necessary.
Typically, you'll want to keep external libraries out of your source directories, though, so I wouldn't actually recommend this structure. I tend to use a structure like this, but, again, this is all preference:
Source: Source code and project files
Libraries: DLLs
Support: Miscellaneous code or projects, but not actually part of the application (perhaps deployment scripts)
Having those in your project and output directory allows the final executing code to reference them without any issues running on different machines.
It sounds as it they put the reference dlls in the project directory, reference them from there, and also include them in the project. That way, when the project directory is copied, the reference dll will be copied with it. Additionally, if the reference dll is missing, the project will complain in Visual Studio.
If an assembly (Bass.Net.dll in your case) contains classes you want to use, you must add a reference to that assembly to your project.
No point the best thing to do is get all your dependenicies and store them in a seperate folder and only reference them do not copy them to your solution ;)
It's really hard to guess why someone else did something, but if I really had to guess, I'ld say that the guy thought to embed the necessary dlls as resources to be sure it was availale to the application. I have seen this technique used to embed fonts or sounds and am not sure if it works at all with dlls; but it's just a guess.
Of course the best way to be sure the files were available would have been to create a deployment project, with Visual Studio or some other installation tool loke Wise or InnoSetup, just to name a few.
This actually might be a good idea in a lot of circumstances. In my opinion their are 3 types of dependencies
Assemblies from the .Net standard library. Never include those locally.
Assemblies that you expect other developers to install as part of an MSI or exe setup package. This usually means their strongly signed and have a copy in the GAC.
Assemblies that you don't expect other developers to install via an MSI or exe installer. Maybe because you have a third party or in house library not in the GAC.
In the third case, the simplest thing to do is store a copy of the DLL in the source repo.