Visual Studio 2017 Installer Project not showing any dependencies

Question

I'm using Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2017 (version 15.4.4), with the Visual Studio Installer Extension. I have an existing C# .Net Core 1.1 console application with four Nuget packages listed as dependencies in my solution, and I have added an Installer project to this solution to build a Windows application setup program.

I've ticked the "primary output" option to include the built DLL, however when I look at the Dependencies folder in the Solution Explorer it is empty. Right-clicking "Refresh Dependencies" on this folder does not do anything for me.

When I build the release for the installer project, the end .msi file and setup.exe don't include or otherwise install any of the nuget packages.

The output console when I build the setup package just lists my runtimeconfig.json file and dll when it is packaging, and the runtimeconfig.json file only has the following in it:

{
  "runtimeOptions": {
    "framework": {
      "name": "Microsoft.NETCore.App",
      "version": "1.1.2"
    }
  }
}

Have I missed something? What might I need to do to get the nuget packages recognized as dependencies and added to the install files so they get deployed by my setup.exe?

Answer 1

Thanks stuartd and Leo Liu. For the moment I've followed the method of Build > Publish > publish to a folder, and then zipping that folder up for distribution.

I did have to copy the dll file into the obj\\x64\\Release\\win-x64 directory after building for this to work. I was getting an error that the file wasn't found.

This solution means I need to provide some more steps to the end users about how to set up the program to run, but at least it works.