Deploy my C# application made in Visual Studio 2010 Express Edition

Question

I have finished my entire application in Visual Studio C# 2010, and it is 100% working. What is the best way to deploy my application?

I need it to be a single file, and I need it to install: my executable, a help documentation file, .NET 4 client profile, and an icon to a certain directory. I tried the ClickOnce application, but it didn't have any good way to package the additional files I needed together. I can't use the setup project, since I only have the Express version of Visual Studio.

I found a program called Inno Setup that I am currently using. It compiles the installer for me and everything works great, except I can't find a way to include the .NET 4 client profile in the installation; as a result when trying to install my application on other computers it always throws errors until the user goes to Microsoft's website and downloads .NET; while this works it is not user friendly at all and most of the clientele that will be using my software is less than computer savvy.

How can I fix this problem?

Answer 1

Look into using Windows Installer XML (WiX) . You can create a Windows Installer package that installs your executable, help file, shortcuts, etc. The .NET 4 client profile can be included with a bootstrapper. The bootstrapper would invoke the client profile setup if needed, then invoke your Windows Installer package. Recently, WiX has been including a new system which does just that, called Burn.

Windows Installer is the standard installer package format on Windows, and can easily be deployed in many scenarios. 3rd-party systems typically have many shortcomings compared to Windows Installer, which is why I avoid systems like Inno Setup.