How to publish my C# project using OpenCV Nuget packages in Visual Studio?

Question

I have developed an opencv application using windows form and C#.

The opencv packages I got from the Nuget packages manager (EMGU.CV and ZedGraph).

Everything works fine in visual studio, but when I publish the project and install the program in my machine, it throws an exception when I click a button that performs some opencv operations.

I guess the opencv packages didn't come along with the final published project, so how do I do to make it export when publishing, I thought it would be an automated process, I have already used other nuget packages and I had no problem with it.

What Am I missing here?

Answer 1

After some days waiting for an answer, and looking for solutions, I've figured it out how to solve this issue.

I came across this question: The type initializer for 'Emgu.CV.CvInvoke' threw an exception

Which led me to this: http://www.emgu.com/wiki/index.php/Download_And_Installation#The_type_initializer_for_.27Emgu.CV.CvInvoke.27_threw_an_exception .

More precisely this part:

First of all, I don't know why the compilation runs fine inside visual studio enviroment and why not when publishing the project as it is. For some reason, the Nuget packges are not enough for publishing the project, you need to add the .dll files manually yourself (not sure why this occurs once I have worked with Nuget packages before and this workaround was not necessary).

To find the .dll files you go to your project directory, then you go to bin\\Debug\\x64 or bin\\Debug\\x86 (depends on which operating system you are targetting - 32 bits or 64 bits -in my case I added all .dll files from x86 folder, I guess you can add from both folders if in doubt).

The Debug folder of your project is build every time you run the project inside Visual Studio enviroment, so if your Debug folder is empty then you just need to run the project one time to be able to find the auto generated files inside that folder. Just a side note here, you can use either the Debug or the Release folder inside bin, just remember to check if you compiled the project in Debug mode for Debug folder, or Release mode for Release folder, otherwise the desired folder will be empty, as explained before, I found no differences between the files generated, I added the dll files from Debug\\x86.

Once you have located the .dll files, you go to Visual Studio, right click on the project in the Solution Explorer tab, then Add ---> Existing Item.

Go to the folder where the .dll files are, select all and click Add.

Once you have done this, the .dll file will be shown in the Solution Explorer.

Right click on each .dll file added in the Solution Explorer, and open the properties tab by clicking Properties. On the Properties tab, go to option Copy to Directory and change the field to Copy Always (the emgu documentation link provided above states to use the option "Copy if newer", but to make sure I chose "Copy always", it worked fine for me). Repeat the process for all .dll files added.

Now you are ready to go for publishing the project as it is,just remember doing this every time before publishing your project to see if no .dll files are missing, so once you got to final version of your program, run it, and then make sure to check the .dll files, it might have new ones to add or to remove.