Common Settings in Visual Studio

Question

Just wondering if there is a way to make Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition generate regular exe files created by the installer for my application?

It hurts me from ClickOnce application files. I had all of these file associations, and now that I need to have an installer for my applications, setting up file associations in the code does not work, because now they are "ClickOnce" application files, not regular exe files. And no, VS does not generally create any exe files for ClickOnce applications.

Any help is much appreciated

Thank you:)

Answer 1

Can VS Express create Setup.Exe? No.

If you study the license, you will find that the Express release is not intended to be a distribution (I don't have the exact wording here). Thus, MS left the installation generator out of the package.

You can use any third-party installation manufacturer, but then you can violate the license.

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Edit: The above applies to VS2005 Express.

Licenses for 2008 and 2010 Express seem more lenient, check.

Answer 2

ProjectFolder\bin\Debug

Must contain .exe files for your application.

If you want to use the EXE for deployment, however, you must create a "release build".

After that, your files will be in

ProjectFolder\bin\Release

Answer 3

As far as I remember, Express Edition does not provide deployment tools, but there are still many free installers that can do the trick; you can try NSIS or InnoSetup for example.

Answer 4

Right-click your solution> Add> Project> Other Project Types> Setup and Deployment> Visual Studio Installer> Installation Project