Develop Reference

Deploying a C# COM dll using an installer

I have made a C# class library, which uses other dll's made by others in the company, for COM interop. It is being used with MS Excel 2013 and works fine on my development machine.
To test it on other machines, i have copied the output (dll's and .tlb file) to my system 32 folder. I have then registered the dll's using regasm (using the /codebase argument). Finally, i added the reference to the .tlb in the Excel VBA editor. Allthough it is a little tedious with 6 dll's, the regasm works fine.
The next step is to distribute the Excel sheet to relevant users in the company, where most are located in different parts of the world in different deparments. This means i do not know what programs that are installed that are needed(for example .net 4.5). Also, since most people in the company know little about the command line, using the above procedure is not only a little tedious, but scares people. I therefore would like to make an installer.
Since i use VS2013, i have installed a plug in that allows me to make a setup file.
I have found this question, which is almost the same as mine, but i don't need the GAC part. How do i modify the procedure to my needs? - i have tried to follow the procedure given, but i get an error stating one of the dll's i use in my own, does not have a strong name and cannot be in the GAC. Build therefore fails. How do i rectify the above? - do i need to fix the dll or can i do this without the GAC-part?
How do i automate the installation process of my dll(s)? - The alternative right now is to roll out VS2013 to the users and make them run the project and register that way (Does VS express suffice?).
Thanks in advance - i started this project with little experience, so learning curve is a bit steep.

It's not clear to me exactly what you want to do, but that link does tell you how to register Dlls - just look at the properties of each Dll and set the register property. You can also add your tlb file to your setup, and mark that to be registered too. If that isn't what you're trying to do then edit the question.
p.s. Don't put tham in the system folder - pout them in your company's/app's common files folder.

Remove GAC Dependency that does not appear in Prerequisites

This is so frustrating. For some reason I have added a dependency Microsoft.VisualStudio.Text.Logic into my application so when I deploy it, it gives me the typical "Unable to install or run the application. The application requires that assembly XXX be installed in the Global Assmebly Cache (GAC) first". No big deal.
So I went to the application files section and it doesn't show up. Then I checked my references and nothing shows up. As a last ditch effort I checked under the "Add References" panel and it's not there. For some reason my Build Server has it, but all my end users as well as my development machine do not. Is there anywhere that I can check as to what dependencies are required and remove them? I cant find any code in my application that would required this DLL.
I guess this question can be generalized as this: "What is the best way to find dependencies for a project to prevent new ones from being created"?

So i found a solution that probably doesnt directly solve it for most people, but it is something good to keep in mind. What i didnt realize was that the Visual Studio versions were different and for some reason the one on the build server was adding a bunch of dependencies (like 15). I solved the issue by updating the server to contain the same visual studio version as my development machine.

Visual Studio Setup Project - Detected Dependencies

i have an issue with the old setup projects in VS2010. please don't blame me for using that. it's a company decision which cannot be changed. poor enough i HAVE to deal with it.
i think it's quite usual what we got: a solution with some projects. the projects reference assemblies. some of them are 3rd party components. they are ALL referenced to/from the SAME individual folder (NOT the GAC or something like C:\Programs...). we just don't reference the installed versions. we want to keep them all in one place.
here comes the point... the project itself points to the folder we want. building and running is fine.
when i examine the setup project, SOME of the 3rd party assemblies are taken from our specific folder, others are taken from C:\Programs...
i just don't know why. i cannot influence this as it seems. even manually editing the .vdproj file ( were "GAC:FALSE" can be set) doesn't help! we need to reference the specific *.dlls in our folder.
has anyone an idea on this? i haven't found something so far...
cheers!
jens

This is how VS behaves. Even though you told him to search for your 3rd party dlls in your own folder, if it finds the same dll in GAC, it will reference it from there. On computers that do not have the dll in the GAC, it will reference it from your folder. In other words, if the computer you deploy your application has all the 3rd party assemblies in the folder that you referenced them from, and the folder exists on the target machine, the application will not crash, even if the dlls are not in the destination you see on your own machine, and will use the assemblies from the folder.

Maybe somebody fiddled with the default reference paths in Visual Studio. If you look at this article, about half-way through it explains the registry keys that are used to locate referenced assemblies:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wkze6zky(v=vs.100).aspx
I think that the VS search mechanism will go through this list at build time, and you may end up with a rather strange combination, especially if some assemblies have dependencies on others and the assembly versions are different. So if you start with a certain assembly that requires others with a particular version it will chase that list of directories until it finds them.
I don't believe it is correct that VS will get assemblies from the GAC by default for reference purposes. The .NET runtime will do this when you run the program, but at dev time all the MS assemblies, for example, are referenced from the SDK install, not from the GAC. The GAC is a repository for running programs that require those assemblies, not a reference for dev builds.

Deploying .NET COM dlls, issues when used on another computer

I'm kinda new to C# programming, and I'd like your help on something.
A quick review of what I have to do first.
I have to create : - A DLL that produces several .h5 files (HDF5 format) and one xml file
- A WPF viewer for the graphs that are written in these HDF5 files.
The problem is mainly that they are going to be used in a software called Panorama E², which basically manages DLLs, in a very restrictive way. For instance, it does not allow .NET framework 4 (Which makes me use the 3.5 version of the framework).
More info on Panorama : http://uk.codra.net/panorama/panorama-e2-information-system
I'm using HDF5DotNet.dll, that I compiled in x64 for .NET 3.5, and DynamicDataDisplay for my WPF application.
All my DLLs are going to be used by another computer, where Panorama is installed, and where Visual Studio isn't (only the 3.5 .NET framework and some required tools are).
What's the problem ?
Well, first, my WPF application isn't really one, Panorama doesn't seem to support WPF, only Windows Forms, and only as DLLs. Which means I created a WPF UserControl, that I embed in a Windows Form DLL.
I basically have 2 DLLs, one which is the WPF control, and one that uses this control in a winform. This is the last one that I have to integrate in Panorama. On my computer, the one I'm coding with, Panorama recognizes correctly the DLL and there's no problem.
But when I try to give these DLLs to my colleague, with his Panorama without Visual Studio installed, it doesn't work. After some tests, I noticed that it only works if the project (the DLLs) have been compiled on the same computer.
The same problem goes for the other DLL, the one that creates files. As I said, it uses HDF5DotNet.dll, but it seems it doesn't create it correctly. I guess it's the same problem, the DLL is not recognized.
What I tried.
I thought that maybe the DLLs weren't exported correctly. Maybe the referenced DLLs or assemblies aren't given, which are when you compile on the same computer. They're COM DLLs, because they're used in Panorama, and I can't manage to export them correctly.
I tried creating setup projects, so that they would be installed with their dependencies, but I couldn't find a way. Only the DLLs are installed. I tried looking at my DLLs with DependancyWalker, and there are some where dependancies are missing. Even if I try adding them manually, nothing changes.
I also know that regsvr32 doesn't work with .NET DLLs, because there is no entry point. That's why i thought about GAC, but I can't manage to register them (with strong name and everything), because I can't generate them directly.
So yeah, sorry for the long post, I tried to explain my train of thoughts and what I actually tried to do, but I can't find a way to give my projects to my colleague so that he can use them on his computer.

"Self Registration" ( be it RegSvr32, RegAsm or other ) is not a Windows Installer Best Practice. This injects out of process dependencies into the installation critical path that the installer is not aware of, that can fail and can't be rolled back or uninstalled.
The better approach is to use RegAsm /regfile to harvest the COM metadata for the ComVisible assembly and then author those registry values into your MSI's Registry table. This way Windows Installer merely has to copy the DLL and apply the registry values to register your component. It's far less likely to break and can be uninstalled and repaired cleanly.
How you do this exactly depends on the tool you are using to author your MSI. In WiX you'd use Heat to harvest this information. In InstallShield you'd set the .NET ComVisible attribute to True.
The end result is the same.

Hi try the following in command prompt instead of regsvr32 try the following :
"RegAsm.exe acxMaterialClassificationMerge.dll /codebase " where acxMaterialClassificationMerge.dll is your dll. You should do this on every pc thats going to use the dll. RegAsm is located in C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727

1: install first dotnet framework version 2 or newer on the computer
2: in command prompt :"RegAsm.exe acxMaterialClassificationMerge.dll /codebase " where acxMaterialClassificationMerge.dll is your dll. You should do this on every pc thats going to use the dll. RegAsm is located in C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727.

What C++ packages do i need to run a program?

I created a C# application that uses a C++ dll and im trying to create an install package that will allow this to run on other computers whether they have VS or not, the problem is i don't know what C++ libraries i need to let it do this. When i run just the application on a blank virtual machine it says
" xxxx has encountered a problem and needs to close."
If i go and download visual studio 2008 express version and install it on the machine, the my program will run fine. problem is express is 85-185mb to download and 335mb up to 1.1gb to install on a machine, the program that is using it is only 33kb. huge overhead there...
if i install just the C++ redistributable from msdn site, it takes up 4mb, but it wont let me run my program.
what packages from C++ do i need to make this program run on a blanked computer?

That question can be tough to answer. If you have the source of the c++ dll you should be able to see its dependencies unless the person used a lot of com or load library calls. One of the best tools I used to get c++ depencany info was depends.exe. One thing to check if its your code is that you are not using debug version with dependencies on debug dll that I think are not in the redistributable.

caleb, I recommend you a program called Dependency Walker. It will show you all the dll dependencies you have. I'm sure there are much more of them for Windows but that's the one I've been using for quite a while and I like it. So you did right by downloading the redistributable package from the MS web site but your app probably depends on some other libraries. When I tried to build my installer long time ago using Visual Studio I remember it was a way to include a redistributable package in your installer or use side-by-side installation - depending whether the license agreement of your Visual Studio version allowed you to do that or not. Also you could include all the dll dependencies you have in the installer.
Hope that helps

The C++ runtime dlls you need are the ones provided with the compiler as redistributable package and exactly this one! Other redist packages won't necessary work because of the manifests embedded in the executables which require an exact version (checked by a hash value of the binaries in the side by side assembly directory C:\Windows\SxS)
So you are right with the redistributable but you need the one that was installed with the compiler not one from a best guess from the internet. The exact versions can be looked at in the manifest files (XML)