I have a Windows application which contain a deployer.
Does the deployer itself contain a copy of the .NET framework?
Or do we have to explicitily install it?
When I check in the solution explorer, it shows the .NET framework under the deployer project under detected dependencies?
My Windows application connects to the Internet to validate for a registered user. Do I need to configure some port (or something like that) while I am installing it? Also how do I check which port my application uses to connect to the Internet?
Regarding #1, just as Xstahef said, you need to prerequisite the .NET framework.
You could put the .NET redistributable in your installer, and if you detect that the .NET runtime is not installed then prompt the user to run and install the .NET distributable contained in your installer (that's what we did some time ago, InstallShield provided this functionality for us). But this may not be recommendable: the .NET runtime has grown a lot in size (depending of the version you need to have in your client's machine), and many customers (at least the educated customers) won't trust installing the runtime from your installer. Besides, you may need to check with the legal department in your company before including a third-party component in your installation.
It depends on your deploy project (Visual Studio, InstallShield?). But commonly, you need to force the .NET installation (prerequisite option). By default, .NET is not contained in the deployment projects.
Here, it depends on the way you want to connect the Internet.
.NET runs in a VM, so you would need to require the framework be installed in order to actually run it. Much like you need to have Flash or Java for those respective mediums. Microsoft has redistributable packages for the .NET framework. So you could probably incorporate them into your installer. If you're targeting 1.1 or 2.0 most people probably won't need it.
So long as you are not trying to get in to the client machine then you shouldn't need anything special like UPnP to [attempt to] open a port if they are behind a NAT router.
Xenocode does allow to running such an application on an absolutely clean PC.
Related
I consider to use ASP.NET for developing a real-time appication that will be shown on a browser (IE, FF, Chrome etc.).
I'm wondering what are the system requirements for the server side where the application will be deployed?
Do I have to use IIS or I'm free to choose any web server I want? If IIS only - does it part of any Windows installation (so users do not have to pay extra charge for that?)
Do I have to install .NET Framework?
anything else?
Thank you!
You don't have to use IIS, you could use Apache, nginx, or xsp, but doing so means you have to use mono which is an open source version of the .NET framework, it's a couple of versions behind the real thing, you can find out more info here: http://www.mono-project.com/ASP.NET
If you choose to use Windows/IIS, then IIS is a feature of Windows that can be installed free of charge. You will need to install the .NET framework in order to host an ASP.NET web application, like IIS, the .NET framework and ASP.NET are features of Windows Server 2008 and above that can be installed/uninstalled whenever you like, for free.
I am going to develop small WPF application. Target platform is .NET 3.5. The main goal is to make it portable (move to any folder and it works out of the box). It should run on Windows 7 machine without any additional installations. However I need a database into it (not need ORM support, just simple storage). Could you please suggest database that would be better for this purpose? I think about SQL CE 4.0 but I am not sure whether it requires additional installations like C++ libs or not. Including DLLs is OK.
I have a project that needs to be done using ASP.NET. Currently, I'm using a Linux box and don't have an access to Windows so I was wondering about doing the development in Mono.Net for the meanwhile. The final project needs to be completed on the Microsoft.NET.
How easy would it be to port a Mono.NET application to a Microsoft.NET? Or should I just wait till I get the windows machine? I don't mind an occasional challenge but not if it's going to be a big pain.
It should work fine just make sure you use the Microsoft .NET APIs only or keep track of any Mono or other opensource DLLs and include them when you run on Windows.
MonoDevelop could also help as it creates Visual Studio compatible project files which can help your migration if you want to later migrate to Visual Studio also.
I have created an ASP.NET website which accesses a DB. The DB can will be alrady installed at target machine. It can be anything from SQL server 2000 to SQL server 2008. Further more the target OS can be anything from Windows server 2000 to Windows 7. I have kept the target .Net framework version as .Net 2.0 to keep matters simple. Also, the target machine can be x86 or x64 or Itanium.
Do I need to create separate builds for different target platforms?
How do I create an Installer which will :
Put this website on a Virtual Directory of IIS server(can be any IIS version)
Detect the target platform and install the appropriate build
I need to do this either using the standard MSI installer of VS2008 or using WiX or any open source installer for that matter. Please help me with this since I am new to deployment projects.
Thanks
You can use softwares like InstallShield in order to create your installer. but InstallShield is not for free I think.
such programs have their own scripting language that simplify the operations that you want to do, like detecting which operating system is installed or which SQL Server version is installer, beside that they allows you to communicate with a certain function in a dll. You can call this function to do some logic or some validation.
You can use WiX to create an MSI that does what you've listed. It is free, and as well as including functionality for what you want also allows custom scripting for any custom logic needed.
Background
In the spirit of continuous integration, I'm trying to automate our deployment process using a Web Deployment Project. Mostly, this has been painless. Most options were baked in and those that weren't were easy to add through the MSBuild XML interface.
However, I cannot seem to find an option for deploying to a remote IIS Server. This seems strange to me because I obviously don't want all my builds to run on my production/staging server.
The Question
How can I set up my Web Deployment project to create/overwrite an IIS Virtual Directory on a remote machine?
Notes
I am using Visual Studio 2008 and .net 3.0.
[Edit]
As suggested by x0n below, I could use MS Deploy for this. I would rather use a Web Deployment Project though, especially since we already have those set up. :)
Your best bet is to take a look at MS Deploy which is available as a stand-alone package right now at RC level. It ships with a Go-Live license, which means it will be compatible with the version shipping with Visual Studio 2010. Some info:
http://blogs.iis.net/msdeploy/default.aspx
It's a great tool - will sync remote servers, farms etc picking up missing metabase info, com objects, registry, .net components in bin or gac, databases - the whole hog. It also ships with an interactive shell and powershell cmdlets.
-Oisin