R – Deploying Windows Forms Applications with a single exe

deploymentinstallationnetwindowswinforms

I have built a setup project for deploying my windows forms app. I want to take all of the files that are needed to deploy (setup.exe, whatever.msi, & prerequisites) and package them in a single self extracting archive.

Ideally the user would run this exe, it would extract files to temp directory, run setup.exe, and delete the files afterwards.

I thought I had this with WinRar, but after setup starts it complains that the msi file is missing. Winrar is deleting the temp directory before I want it to.

Can I make winrar wait before deleting the temp files? Is there another utility I can use? Is there something VS will do for me?

Thanks

Best Answer

I've used Zip 2 Secure Exe for this and it works great. It is free

http://www.chilkatsoft.com/ChilkatSfx.asp

Related Solutions

C# – How to save application settings in a Windows Forms application

If you work with Visual Studio then it is pretty easy to get persistable settings. Right click on the project in Solution Explorer and choose Properties. Select the Settings tab and click on the hyperlink if settings doesn't exist.

Use the Settings tab to create application settings. Visual Studio creates the files Settings.settings and Settings.Designer.settings that contain the singleton class Settings inherited from ApplicationSettingsBase. You can access this class from your code to read/write application settings:

Properties.Settings.Default["SomeProperty"] = "Some Value";
Properties.Settings.Default.Save(); // Saves settings in application configuration file

This technique is applicable both for console, Windows Forms, and other project types.

Note that you need to set the scope property of your settings. If you select Application scope then Settings.Default.<your property> will be read-only.

Reference: How To: Write User Settings at Run Time with C# - Microsoft Docs

Windows – Redirect Windows cmd stdout and stderr to a single file

You want:

dir > a.txt 2>&1

The syntax 2>&1 will redirect 2 (stderr) to 1 (stdout). You can also hide messages by redirecting to NUL, more explanation and examples on MSDN.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

C# – How to save application settings in a Windows Forms application

Windows – Redirect Windows cmd stdout and stderr to a single file

Related Topic