I am working on a Windows Forms Application using Visual Studio 2010 IDE. My need is that I have certain block of code that needs to be run only once, at the starting of the application and never again for the entire lifetime(by lifetime I mean never again on the same system,unless the system is reconfigured). I have placed that code in a separate .cs file and for now, I run it's assembly(.exe) manually for testing purposes. But for deployment purposes, how do I go about it? It contains code for creating scheduled tasks using the schtasks command through command prompt. I know there are workarounds for the same, but I need to stick to the schtasks approach. I know there is something like Setup Projects that help us configure all the files that are required for the installation of our project and also create an installation file in the end, but can I write some code in it to ensure that it runs once, during installation, before my application is executed?
Yes you can have a Setup and Deployment package run an exe during installation. You will have to create a Custom Action in the setup to do that.
Related
I have an application written in C# using VisualStudio 2015 and I want to publish it (eg give an exe or installer to somebody to use it on its PC). From VisualStudio there is possibility to click "publish" in solution explorer. The result files are:
-Application files (File folder)
-project.application (Application manifest)
-setup.exe (Application)
As far as I know "manifest" file should be some metadata, but I can execute that file and it gives me an installer (the same as setup.exe). After installing it runs an application (just like setup.exe). It makes me confused - what exactly project.application is? Can I delete it and use only setup.exe? What is the correct way of publishing an app? One last thing: why does the installer run installation on first execution and run an application on any other? I would expect to run installation any time (just like other software).
Thanks
It sounds like a ClickOnce application. See the following link for more information:
ClickOnce security and deployment
In a nutshell:
The installer copies the files to the users AppData and then runs the application.
There are also other options such as checking for updates from a network location or web address. Then when you run the application it checks for updates and uses the manifest to do an incremental update of the application files.
Often times when I am building medium to large scale applications, I end up writing a powershell script or batch file to build all of my dependent assemblies, etc. Lately I have been working on a windows store app, and the script approach is working just fine, except for one final part. I can't figure out how I can not only build, but also deploy my app to my local machine. I can do it in Visual Studio via this menu option:
But that means I have to go to Visual Studio and do it manually which kind of defeats the purpose of an automated build. Does anyone have any clue as to how I can get this 'deploy' functionality from the command line?? Is it possible?
Try the same behavior as with sideloading apps:
At the Windows PowerShell prompt, run the following commands, where
SampleApp is the path and name of the package file you created (e.g.,
MySample_1.0.0.0_AnyCPU_Debug.appx):
import-module appx
add-appxpackage “SampleApp”
Actually I want to run exe file(My Job.exe) Through window Service in C# but window service should be started automatically when I start the Computer?
I have already added Window Service (MyService) manually. I have also setup project of My application where I also added this service so that I can also be installed when I install my Application.
I have serviceInstaller1 with property
StartType=Automatic;ServiceName=MyService.
I also have serviceProcessInstaller1 with Property
Account=LocalSystem;
When I run this my Applicationo gets installed but MyService don't get installed and I also not see it in Service of Computer Management.
Could any body please help me I already spend two days on it but not finding proper guidline. thanks in Advance.
How is your application being installed? Did you create an installer (.msi file) for it? It sounds like you're trying to implement your own installer instead of using existing tool to do this.
I recommend Advanced Installer. It is a very powerful installer generator and has all the features you need in the free version, and more importantly, it's very easy to use. This tool lets you create an install wizard with the ability to patch and uninstall your software (including services, registry values, files, etc).
I recently have one project with windows service in VS2010 and .Net 4.5 and user OS will be Windows Server 2008. I was unable to create fully functional installation a long time, and still i dont have, but request are changed so no need for installation file. But i can give you advice "How to do".
If you don't have purchased version of InstallShield you need to find some other program for creating installation file.
For installation you need just to copy you .exe output of service and one batch file witch will have next content:
#ECHO off
"C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\InstallUtil.exe" "%~dp0%<filename>.exe"
pause
and then you need to run with administration rights this batch file.
Both files (.exe and .bat) must be in same folder.
You can delete pause command but then you will not see if registration of service was successfully.
Make sure that you have installed target .NET Framework on PC.
I hope that this will help you.
If you just need to run your exe file(My Job.exe) when the system starts up you could add your exe to the Windows Task Scheduler.
Is there any specific purpose for using a Windows service?
The reason that I am saying this is that you have a wide variety of options to invoke you exe as follows
Schedule based on common recurring events, i.e. When the computer starts or When a user logs on.
Schedule based on the calendar, i.e. Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or One time.
Advanced options like execution based on events, etc.
I'm not sure what happened, but my installer is in a weird state--when I install my MSI, it doesn't seem to be running the current version of the code (I'm using Custom Actions). I verified it by placing some MessageBox.Shows and sure enough, they are not popping up.
It's possible I may have had a few unsuccessful installs previously which may have put the installer in a bad state...but how do I go about resolving this?
Thanks...
If you think you are running older copies of your .msi code, the best way to resolve it is to delete all files from your %temp% directory (type "%temp%" in the windows explorer address bar and you'll see the contents of this directory and delete everything, then try again.)
You shouldn't expect MessageBox.Show to work in a .NET custom installer action. Those actions run in the context of the Windows Installer service, which doesn't run on the interactive desktop. Try logging to the event log (or any other I/O operation that doesn't depend on the current windows desktop and doesn't require an administrative or current-user security token) if you want to debug your custom action.
I'm using a native DLL (FastImage.dll) in a C# ASP.NET Web Service that sometimes locks (can't delete it---says access denied); this requires stopping IIS to delete the DLL. The inability to delete this DLL in the bin folder of my published Web Service prevents me from publishing successfully (even though it thinks it published successfully!), which makes development and fixing the bug difficult (especially when it just happily runs old code since my changes may not be reflected on the server!). Note that the bug causing the Web Service to bomb and lock up the DLL is in my code, which is outside of said DLL, so I think this is a more general problem than just the FreeImage library (not to bring them any heat).
Has anyone experienced this?
Is there a way to make sure that when it says "Publish succeeded" from the VS IDE that it really means it, or to run sort of script to check that the files are really deleted before it attempts to Publish (like a pre-build step in VC++). (Right now I manually delete the files before publishing to make sure that I know the DLLs were replaced, instead of running old DLLs. It's still a problem, though if I can't delete the DLL.)
How would I detect whether a file was successfully deleted from a batch file? (so I can stop and start IIS if it fails)
Is it possible to stop and start IIS from a script (preferably from the Publish... action in the VS IDE) and if so, how?
Using the IISReset command line tool will only restart IIS on the local machine, not on a remote server to which you are publishing.
Assuming that you are publishing to a Windows 2003 server, I'd suggest trying the slightly less drastic step of stopping and restarting the IIS AppPool in the web site or virtual folder in which the web service runs. (That way you are not taking all sites that run on the target server offline.) This too assumes that the web service runs in its own app pool. Ideally it should, so you keep it isolated.
I'd recommend getting away from using the Publishing process and to look into using a Web Deployment Project. Here is a post on ScottGu's blog detailing VS 2005 Web Deployment Projects.
The advantage to the Web Deployment Project approach is that it provides you with all the power and capability of MSbuild, as it is really just a convenience wrapper around MSBuild. Here's a post from the MSBuild team about pre-build and post-build capabilities
Hope this helps.
You could use the IISReset command line tool to stop/restart iis. So you could write a simple batch file to stop iis, copy your files, and then restart iis. I'm not sure how to integrate this with the VS publish feature however.