Deploying Windows Applications

Microsoft .NET Framework, ASP.NET, Visual C# (CSharp, C Sharp, C-Sharp) Developer Training, Visual Studio

This article—Deploying Windows Applications—is from Beginning Visual C# 2005, by Karli Watson, Christian Nagel, Jacob Hammer Pedersen, Jon D. Reid, Morgan Skinner, Eric White. Copyright © 2006 Wiley Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission. This article has been edited especially for C# Online.NET.

Deploying Windows Applications

There are several ways to install Windows applications. Simple applications can be installed with a simple xcopy deployment, but for installation to hundreds of clients, an xcopy deployment is not really useful. For that situation, you have two options: you can use ClickOnce deployment, or you can install the application with the Microsoft installer.

With ClickOnce deployment the application is installed by clicking a link to a Website. In situations where the user should select a directory to install the application into, or when some Registry entries are required, the Windows Installer is the deployment option to use.

This chapter covers both options for installing Windows applications. In particular, you will look at:

• Deployment basics
• ClickOnce deployment
• Visual Studio Deployment and Setup Project types
• Features of the Windows Installer
• Creating Windows Installer Packages using Visual Studio 2005