How can I properly publish my Windows desktop application in such a way that will ensure the end user has the right files needed to run it?

Question

I have created a small desktop application using .NET 4 for generating an authentication string. It runs fine on my Windows 7 computer, however when I deployed it to our QA guy on his Vista machine, it gave him an error saying he needed to install .NET 4... FAIR ENOUGH. We installed .NET 4, however the next error said that "Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.dll" was missing from the GAC. Crap. So I poked around a bit and found this:

enter image description here

I then set Publish Status of Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.dll to Include and published again. This time it gave him an error about "System.Web.Mvc"! So I knew I was on to something. So I went and did this:

enter image description here

However, now when he runs it it just says it can't download files required to run the application, and will not specify what they are!

How can I properly publish my Windows desktop application in such a way that will ensure the end user has the right files needed to run it?

Note: I think Razor and MVC are included because this windows desktop app project is dependent on some other projects in this solution that are using MVC. (Basically this desktop app is using some of the Models.)

Edit: Here is the end result (README was added by me not VS)

enter image description here

A desktop application should not depend on anything in System.Web. Have you included a third party library in your project that depends on System.Web? — steenhulthin, May 19 '14 at 10:46

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 28 '11 at 18:15

As it turned out, the second screen shot view with everything set to Include was the proper way and worked fine while the first screen shot caused missing DLL errors during install. It really was just an FTP upload user error that had the installer looking for a folder that was not there, which is why the second version did not work the first time.

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 27 '11 at 19:37

0

I think you should be looking in the Prerequisites dialog from the Publish tab of the project Properties window, not the Application Files dialog. Not sure if this is an SP1 feature or not (I have SP1).

Image reply from Ryan (question poster):

enter image description here

edited Jul 27 '11 at 19:37

MetaGuru

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answered Jul 27 '11 at 19:32

Alan McBee

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see image? it is that tab, but you could still be right that I am doing it wrong – MetaGuru Jul 27 '11 at 19:38
You people need to purchase snag-it! – JonH Jul 27 '11 at 19:39
but Snipping Tool was "free" :) – MetaGuru Jul 27 '11 at 19:55

How can I properly publish my Windows desktop application in such a way that will ensure the end user has the right files needed to run it?

2 Answers2