Why is Visual Studios Installer not picking up dependencies

Question

I'm using Visual Studio 2005. I have a program written in C#. When I create the installer and then add the primary output, it's not picking up any dependencies. Not even .Net. Anybody have any ideas?

Answer 1

I fixed my own problem, but figured I would post the "fix" in case any else should run into the problem. I went back under my main project>references and removed the references to other projects. Then I right clicked on each of the other projects and removed them. I added them all back and rebuilt the project. Then I right clicked on the "Detected dependencies" folder in the installer and hit refresh dependencies and it detected them all

Answer 2

If you want to install the .NET Framework with your setup, you should add it under "Pre-requisites" on the property pages of your setup and deployment project.

Then the created bootstrapper (i.e. the setup.exe file) will check whether the specified version of the .NET Framework is present on the target system and install it as needed.

Please note that this check is only done by the setup.exe file and not when the user double-clicks the msi file. The reason for that is that Windows installer does not allow one msi file (your installer) to start another msi installation (e.g. the .NET Framework installation).

Answer 3

Your dependency dll must be in binary search path of windows. That is PATH=/path/to/dll must be in environment.

Answer 4

Just in case it helps somebody... None of the other answers worked for me... It seems the cause of the issue for me was that I was adding the 'Primary output' and 'Content Files' in one step (at the same time)... once I deleted them both and added them individually it worked.

i.e. once I removed them both ('Primary output' and 'Content Files') and added 'Primary output' the Detected Dependencies folder was populated correctly, I then continued to add the 'Content Files'.

Answer 5

Try to do a build of your installer, it may add the dependencies at that time.