Publish Visual Studio 2013 without installation

Question

I have a WPF project that I am trying to publish without any form of installer. Basically, I want the program to be compiled into a directory with all the necessary files next to it, so that I can fix everything and deploy the program to clients.

Ideally, I want all external resources to be compiled into EXE.

Is there any way to do this? If I enter the debug / bin folder on my workstation, I can execute the EXE, but if I zipped it along with the DLL and try to do it on another machine, it will work, maybe the missing file is my guess. (if I publish it with the installer, it works, but it is not suitable for this project).

thanks Steve

edit: When I execute the program (which I copied from the Bin directory after the successufull build) nothing happens, just the message "the program stopped working". My program uses 3 external files, icon, image and font. I have a link to a DLL (WPFtoolkit), I added this DLL to a directory in my solution explorer. All files have the value "Paste into the embedded resource" and "Do not copy." I also added this code to my program, still the same error. http://codeblog.larsholm.net/2011/06/embed-dlls-easily-in-a-net-assembly/ the size of my EXE is correct, I see that the DLL was added to it. nevertheless, the program only works on my workstation :(

edit:

Should I store DLLs in links? I suppose not, but if I do, I get an error message when called:

using Microsoft.Windows.Controls; 

If I do not name it, the program compiles, but it crashes. see error message below:

 Problem signature: Problem Event Name: CLR20r3 Problem Signature 01: sw imperium.exe Problem Signature 02: 1.0.0.0 Problem Signature 03: 53bdd468 Problem Signature 04: PresentationFramework Problem Signature 05: 4.0.30319.18408 Problem Signature 06: 52312f13 Problem Signature 07: a19 Problem Signature 08: 46 Problem Signature 09: System.Windows.Markup.XamlParse OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.1 Locale ID: 1033 Additional Information 1: 0a9e Additional Information 2: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789 Additional Information 3: 0a9e Additional Information 4: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789 

Answer 1

Is the toolbox installed on your PC (where is the visual studio) in the GAC? All files that are not included as an embedded resource must be copied locally (in this case, the assembly will copy these files to the bin folder.

To isolate the problem and get the best error message, move the code to a non-developer computer and turn on the merge registrar to find any assemblies that the loader cannot find.

See this link for more information on boot loader registrar (fusion). How to enable assembly failure logging (Fusion) in .NET

Consider adding some additional error logging code to the application launch, see .NET application cannot start and receive XamlParseException

Answer 2

There is a good tool to combine assemblies that support WPF:. net reactor . You can also try the Vitevic Assembly Embedder . I hope for this help.

Answer 3

You might want to go through this article to see any missing dependencies and profile the application.

PS: If this does not help, try adding additional information to the question code of the example and / or binary