CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#.netvisual-studiovisual-studio-2010
Abe Miessler
Abe Miessler

Reputation: 85056

Possible to package all needed files in an EXE?

I wrote an EXE that uses a third party dll and a template excel document. Anytime someone uses it they have to copy all three files (which is a pain).

Is there any way I can package everything that is needed into the EXE so there is only one file to worry about?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 3453

Answers (4)

Alex Aza
Alex Aza

Reputation: 78467

You can add files to your project in visual studio and set Build Action to None and Copy to Output directory to Copy always.

or

You can add these files to assembly resources. Adding and Editing Resources (Visual C#)

I suggest doing the first.

Also, for 3rd party dll: set Copy Local to true for the reference.

After you have your project set like this. Create setup project in VS and it will make one exe as you want.

How to: Create or Add a Setup Project

Upvotes: 1

CodeNaked
CodeNaked

Reputation: 41393

This is something that ilmerge is used for, atleast for combining assemblies. There is more information here and here.

There are several known problems with this though.

Upvotes: 2

Ry-
Ry-

Reputation: 224983

Yes - drag it into your project resources (My Project > Resources tab) and from there you can access it using global::Resources.resourceFile (I think - that might not be the right syntax, an alternative is here) as a byte stream and write it locally from there.

Upvotes: 1

Ritch Melton
Ritch Melton

Reputation: 11608

Software installation is a pain, but I think you can get away with an xcopy style deployment by using the compression tool of your choice (like winzip) and creating a self extracting executable.

Upvotes: 0

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