If I create a WPF or WinForms app, I can launch it by its executable in Debug folder. Why do all programs come with an install wizard and how do I create one for my WPF/ WinForms app?
Programs usually come with an installer because it can put the program in a known location, add things to the start menu, add registry keys, etc.
You can create an installer using NSIS.
installers will be run (most of the time) by administrators. This will allow you to modify protected things of the system during setup such as the file system (Program Files folder), registry and install services and such.
The actual program then will not need these privileges and can be run by non-admins.
Also: Microsoft Logo requirements make the use of Windows Installer (the service that installs MSIs and adds them to your control panel for easy removal) mandatory.
While deploying a windows based application to a client machine we need to take care about several aspects like installation location,Registry values and to ensure that the required version of .Net framework is present in the client machine.Such kinds of things can be automated using an installer.You can create an installer by using the setup and deployment project or using clickonce
Check the below links for more
Setup and Deployment Projects
Deploying a WPF Application (WPF)
Deploying a Standard WPF Application Using ClickOnce and Visual Studio
WPF 3.5 SP1 Deployment
For example, almost any program produced by Visual Studio 2010, if copied to a freshly installed Windows XP system, will fail to run. This is what installers do well that is hard to get right: dependencies.
Related
Is it possible to create a fully-distributable application using C# that installs in a "proper" location (i.e. C:\Program Files\MyAppName) using only Visual Studio?
I'm new to creating stand-alone apps and I have created a first simple test app, but now wish to develop a home inventory-type application. It requires the distributable SQL Server database (which I used in my test app), and I would like it to install to a "normal" location. Right now, it seems to install to C:\Users\%Username%\AppData\Local\Apps\2.0.
Can this be done with C#, or does it require some 3rd party installation creation package?
As long as they don't rely on assemblies in the GAC, etc. .NET applications are standalone / "fully-distributable" by default. The most common way that I install my applications to other machines is by copying the output folder, (bin\Release for example) to my desired install location. For applications that are to be downloaded off of a website, zipping the folder should be sufficient, and the user can unzip to any location that they wish.
I have a Windows Setup project that installs 2 windows services, copies over a bunch of executables and driver files, and then installs a driver. I want to add a WPF project to my solution, and then deploy it with the same behavior as ClickOnce -- I want an entry in the Add/Remove Programs list, with an option to Uninstall. I know that I won't be able to update this program without updating and redeploying the MSI, unlike ClickOnce which has automatic updates.
I have tried adding the project output to the custom actions, file system, programs folder, and desktop. This only copies the final .exe for my wpf application to these areas, but it does not register the application as part of the system apps.
The actual setup project has a row created in Add/Remove Programs, so I can uninstall all my services and remove the copied files from the system, but I also want another row in Add/Remove Programs for the WPF application.
Please let me know if there is a way to install the WPF application as part of my windows setup installer, and also a way to uninstall if the setup project is being uninstalled or rolled back.
Thanks,
Misha
I have written a application in C# using visual studio, I have made a project set up file which as created to files for me in my debug.
The Windows Installer and the setup application are both needed, but i would like to merge them into one, like when you download an app the installer its just one file.
Could some one please show me how to do this, or just point me towards a good source.
Thanks in advance.
If you're using Visual Studio's built-in setup project template to generate your installer, then you don't need the setup.exe file at all.
The only thing you need to distribute is the .msi file. That contains everything that a user would need to install your application. The setup.exe file is simply a stub that launches the setup routines from information in the .msi file, which is a database that the Windows Installer uses to install your application. And since these files can be launched by double-clicking on them if the Windows Installer service is installed, you really don't need to distribute the setup.exe bootstrapper if you don't want to.
Some special reasons that you might want to distribute a setup.exe file are:
You expect for some reason that your users might not have the required version of the Windows Installer installed on their computer. This is getting to be pretty rare nowadays, especially considering how widespread broadband Internet connections are and how pushy OS vendors are getting with pushing automatic updates. But if your users are "disconnected" (in many senses of the word), you might want to use a setup executable to verify the presence of the necessary version of the Windows Installer, install it if it isn't there, and then launch your .msi file to perform the install. (You cannot run a .msi file if you do not have Windows Installer installed.)
You need to support multiple languages. In this case, the setup.exe file can perform a language transformation on the .msi file before launching the installer.
You want to manage the installation of several .msi files in sequence. The way that Windows Installer is designed, it's difficult to chain installations of .msi files, which makes it difficult to install dependencies before or after you install your own application's files. A setup.exe file is not subject to the limitations of the Windows Installer, so it can be used to chain these and precisely manage the order of installation.
In general, creating your own setup.exe file (or using one of the many third-party installer software packages to create it for you) gives you significantly greater flexibility. You essentially have complete control over the installation process, rather than having to follow the rules of Windows Installer.
But 83.44% of the time, this isn't necessary and you should follow the much simpler route of using an .msi file. This also allows system administrators to automate installs across machines that they manage (for example, throughout a corporate network), something that is not supported for raw executable files.
Can I ask the user WHERE to install the application during install time?
Most setups prompt the user where to install the application, I'm sure you are familiar with it. How can I do this with the visual studio publisher? (If it cannot be done from the VS publisher could you reccommend a program that can do it? Or do I have to do it manually?
As per this MSDN post: "ClickOnce application are installed per user in the user application cache. These applications are managed by the ClickOnce service. If you want to install to a user specifed location such a Program Files... you should use MSI or some other installer technology."
The other deployment methodologies supported by Visual Studio are discussed here
No, you can't. ClickOnce install the application in a user's AppData folder it's not installed like a traditional application. If you want to have more control over stuff like this you need to write your own installer.
Not sure if it is changed, but ClickOnce applications are installed per user in the user application cache. You cant change that location. This means that if 2 different user share the same machine there are 2 different copies of your application.
We are building an application on .net, And it is an Image Viewer application uses .net 3.5.
And this application will be on a CD along with other images.
My Question is, is it possible to Auto Run this application when you insert a CD on a machine which DOESN'T Contain .NET Frame Work.
Or any other ways of building the application which runs from the CD.
Autorun is a feature of Windows. It does not have anything to do with .NET really. You can use it by placing apropriate files in the root of your CD.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoRun
In order to execute a .NET app WITHOUT .NET framework installed, point the Autorun.inf to an installer of you application, which would be deployed on the CD as well.
The application will fail to run directly when it cannot find the libraries it need.
What you can do is to create a non-.NET dependent bootstrapper, include the framework installer.
So when the CD auto run, run the bootstrapper, the bootstrapper will run the installer. Once installed, run the application.
No, you can't run .NET applications on a computer without the .NET Framework installed. That's a hard rule, and a pretty intuitive one, it seems to me. Somehow, this question still gets asked a lot.
But Auto Run has nothing to do with the .NET Framework. It's a feature provided by the Windows operating system designed to run your setup/installation program directly from the inserted installation medium without requiring any kind of user interaction.
So what you should be doing is creating a setup program for your .NET application. You can do this from within Visual Studio: just create a Setup Project instead of a Windows Forms Application. The setup program will take care of detecting whether or not the computer has the appropriate version of the .NET Framework installed, and installing it if necessary along with the application. The setup bootstrapper will be able to run without the .NET Framework installed, so you can create an autorun.inf file that simply specifies setup.exe as the application to be launched automatically.
I've used mono to do this a few times, not with the static linking as mentioned in the other answer, but by including the mono distribution on the cd (or a subset of it). Mono doesn't seem to do much in the way of modifying registry, system32, etc. So you can do an xcopy deployment of if, or CD deployment in this case. You'll end up running mono.exe
I think Mono supports some form of static linking that doesn't require installation. But I never tried it myself.