Deploying a .NET application - SyntaxEditor for Windows Forms Forum

Posted 18 years ago by Kasper

Hi all,

While the subject may lead you to think otherwise, this IS related to the SyntaxEditor :). My application is not yet finished, but it's so far ahead that I'm thinking about how I can distribute it. I have no experience in this area with .NET, and it seems like it might be a bit more complicated than in the good old Delphi days :P. I am of course using some 3rd party controls, including all the ones made by Actripro software, but how exactly do I deploy my application? If I set Visual Studio to "Release", it does generate some DLL's, and as I would expect, they are less than 1 mb when zipped. However, no DLL's for Actipro controls are included, and when I try to run my application on another machine, I get an exception. I can see that "Copy Local" are set to false for Actipro references as well as references to other 3rd party controls - should this be changed? If I do, my release directory gets a lot heavier, but I guess that's normal. So please enlighten me here - how should this be done, in general of course, but also specifically about the Actipro controls :)

Kasper

[Modified at 06/02/2006 06:21 PM]

Comments (5)

Posted 18 years ago by Actipro Software Support - Cleveland, OH, USA

Hi Kasper,

.NET deployment is actually very easy. You just include the binaries from your application and copy them to a folder on your target computer. By "binaries" I mean what your project is compiling (yourapp.exe) and any non-System assembly references.

So for instance, your project creates yourapp.exe and references SyntaxEditor. You would copy yourapp.exe, ActiproSoftware.SyntaxEditor.dll, ActiproSoftware.WinUICore.dll, and ActiproSoftware.Shared.dll to a folder on the target computer. That's basically it.

All the paths to where our assemblies are installed on your computer, are specified in the SyntaxEditor readme file.

Actipro Software Support

Posted 18 years ago by Kasper

>All the paths to where our assemblies are installed on your computer, are specified in the SyntaxEditor readme file.

Okay, so I should include these in my installer, instead of making Visual Studio generate them for me by setting the Copy Local to true?

Posted 18 years ago by Actipro Software Support - Cleveland, OH, USA

Either way is fine... they just have to end up on the end user's machine in the same folder as your app.

Actipro Software Support

Posted 18 years ago by Marianne

Do you have any reason for recommending that over deploying the dlls to the GAC?

------------------------------- Marianne

Posted 18 years ago by Actipro Software Support - Cleveland, OH, USA

We never recommend placing our assemblies in the GAC if at all possible. With how assembly binding works in .NET, if you have a newer assembly in the GAC than your app wants to be using, the newer version from the GAC will be used instead of the one you tested your app with. This of course could introduce some problems if code changes in a maintenance release alter what return values your app expects.

The GAC really should only be used by the publishers of products. Third party components shouldn't be placed there unless the end-user installed them there themselves.

Actipro Software Support

The latest build of this product (v24.1.1) was released 3 months ago, which was after the last post in this thread.

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