I just want my application to be a single file! | Tech Off

alwaysmc2
It's not stupid; It's advanced.

I have this WinForms program that I'm writing, and recently I pulled a bunch of back-end code out and put it in a separate class library. That seemed like the organized thing to do, and it allows me to more-easily port the program to Media Center when I get the time. Smiley

I was about to publish the application to my website, but I realized that the code that I put in the separate class library is no longer included in the exe file, but rather is put into a DLL. That would be fine if the program was for installing, but the program is supposed to be ultra portable, and a single file makes that simpler.

Does anyone know how to force Visual Studio (I'm using C#) to put all of the necessary information into a single executable file?

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

Tried ILMerge?

More info at MSR.

Shining Arcanine

Have you tried compiling a statically linked library as opposed to a dynamically linked one? I know that this is not hard to do in C. There should be a way to do it in C#.

littleguru
allein, allein,... allein, allein!

Hmmm... why not zip it up and put it on the website. Might sound naive, but there are a lot of applications coming with DLLs and stuff and are available as zip files...

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

Shining Arcanine wrote:

Have you tried compiling a statically linked library as opposed to a dynamically linked one? I know that this is not hard to do in C. There should be a way to do it in C#.

Because that's not how .NET works. FWIW, ILMerge is how you "statically link".

alwaysmc2
It's not stupid; It's advanced.

littleguru wrote:

Hmmm... why not zip it up and put it on the website. Might sound naive, but there are a lot of applications coming with DLLs and stuff and are available as zip files...

I put the EXE in a ZIP file anyway, but a single EXE is much more elegant than an EXE and several DLLs. (I'm going to need to refference DLLs made by others eventually).

W3bbo wrote:
Tried ILMerge?

More info at MSR.

Augh, a command line utility. Don't these people who make otherwise great utilities know that no human wants to deal with the command prompt?
Thanks, though. I'll look into it. Wink

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

alwaysmc2 wrote:

W3bbo wrote: Tried ILMerge?

More info at MSR.

Augh, a command line utility. Don't these people who make otherwise great utilities know that no human wants to deal with the command prompt?
Thanks, though. I'll look into it.

Follow the MSR link, the author references a number of GUI frontends.

alwaysmc2
It's not stupid; It's advanced.

W3bbo wrote:

alwaysmc2 wrote:

W3bbo wrote: Tried ILMerge?

More info at MSR.

Augh, a command line utility. Don't these people who make otherwise great utilities know that no human wants to deal with the command prompt?
Thanks, though. I'll look into it.

Follow the MSR link, the author references a number of GUI frontends.

Whoops, I should have read that one first.

Oh, so I tried the Gilma frontend, and wow! It does exactly what I want.

Haha. Gilma is also an exe and a dll, so I used it to merge itself into one file. Interestingly it cut the total file size in half. It worked on my program as well. Big Smile

Anyway, thanks! This is great! Big Smile

stevo_
Casablanca != Manchester

There isn't a packaging method for apps yet? kinda like os x, it could just be a zip or something..

What are .application files? xbap? as they deploy in a pretty sleak fashion.

alwaysmc2
It's not stupid; It's advanced.

stevo_ wrote:

What are .application files? xbap? as they deploy in a pretty sleak fashion.

I think those (edit: the .application files) are the ClickOnce applications, where you can install them with... er.... two clicks, but that's including clicking the link. It doesn't even need to bring up UAC or anything. The experience is much like opening a word document, except the thing that you're opening is a full program.
Denounce is a great example of a ClickOnce program, especially because it's so perty. Smiley

I haven't messed around with ClickOnce much yet, but there is an option in Visual Studio under the "security" tab in the application's properties.

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

alwaysmc2 wrote:

Denounce is a great example of a ClickOnce program, especially because it's so perty.

Wow, looks nice. It shows what you can do with WPF when it's in the right hands (i.e. people with design sense).

thing is, when I try to open Denounce's *.application file I get an error.

alwaysmc2
It's not stupid; It's advanced.

W3bbo wrote:

alwaysmc2 wrote: Denounce is a great example of a ClickOnce program, especially because it's so perty.

Wow, looks nice. It shows what you can do with WPF when it's in the right hands (i.e. people with design sense).

thing is, when I try to open Denounce's *.application file I get an error.

That's why I haven't looked into ClickOnce seriously. Sure it has this great user setup experiance, but does it work though FireFox? At least half of the people who would want to use my program would use FireFox.
I don't know if it really does have any browser dependencies, though.

CannotResolveSymbol
{insert caption here}

stevo_ wrote:

There isn't a packaging method for apps yet? kinda like os x, it could just be a zip or something..

What are .application files? xbap? as they deploy in a pretty sleak fashion.

They're sleek, but it's not single-file deployment. .Application files just tell Windows to automatically download your files.

(Not that OSX has single file deployment either... the Finder just makes *.app directories look like a single file, and there's nothing magic about a DMG that you couldn't do with a Zip file on Windows).

TommyCarlier
Trust me, I'm from the Internets

ILMerge is a great tool which we use at work. We automatically merge some of our assemblies in the PostBuild-events of the main assembly. It's really easy to set up.

TommyCarlier
Trust me, I'm from the Internets

Here's a line from the PostBuild-event of one of our projects, to merge its output with Weblications.Utils.dll (should all be on 1 line):

IF $(ConfigurationName)==Release
    "c:\Program Files\Microsoft\ILMerge\ilmerge.exe"
        /keyfile:c:\data\repository\weblications.snk
        /internalize /target:library
        /out:c:\data\repository\Binaries\$(TargetName).Merged.dll
        $(TargetPath)
        c:\data\repository\Binaries\Weblications.Utils.dll

wisemx
Live it

alwaysmc2
Don't these people who make otherwise great utilities know that no human wants to deal with the command prompt?

Are you kidding?
The command prompt is coming back bigtime!
Lots of reasons to use it in VS2008, SQLMetal, ASP.NET, etc.

alwaysmc2
It's not stupid; It's advanced.

wisemx wrote:

alwaysmc2
Don't these people who make otherwise great utilities know that no human wants to deal with the command prompt?

Are you kidding?
The command prompt is coming back bigtime!
Lots of reasons to use it in VS2008, SQLMetal, ASP.NET, etc.

I understand where it might be usefull, like in TommyCarlier's example, but a GUI application can accept arguments just like a console application can.

As for things like PowerShell, that's just great! It lets IT admins do a lot of work with only a few lines of code. In the case of single-use utilities, though, a simple GUI is never a bad thing.

figuerres
???

alwaysmc2 wrote:

I have this WinForms program that I'm writing, and recently I pulled a bunch of back-end code out and put it in a separate class library. That seemed like the organized thing to do, and it allows me to more-easily port the program to Media Center when I get the time.

I was about to publish the application to my website, but I realized that the code that I put in the separate class library is no longer included in the exe file, but rather is put into a DLL. That would be fine if the program was for installing, but the program is supposed to be ultra portable, and a single file makes that simpler.

Does anyone know how to force Visual Studio (I'm using C#) to put all of the necessary information into a single executable file?

Why? depending on how you distribute the app you:

a) unzip a folder and click the .exe
b) installer does the copy and makes a shortcut
c) Click Once Install and that will also do updates for you.

Click Once will also update by comping only the new bits.

evildictaitor
How could you use the adjective "indescribable" truthfully?

On the other hand, every two-bit piece of rubbish on the internet that you downloaded just so you could burn a CD, or convert a bizzare music format has it's own GUI nowadays, and its really irritating.

ZippyV
Soapbox = Fail

alwaysmc2 wrote:

I understand where it might be usefull, like in TommyCarlier's example, but a GUI application can accept arguments just like a console application can.

Unless you run Windows Server Core.

alwaysmc2
It's not stupid; It's advanced.

evildictaitor wrote:

On the other hand, every two-bit piece of rubbish on the internet that you downloaded just so you could burn a CD, or convert a bizzare music format has it's own GUI nowadays, and its really irritating.

The problem is that that a lot of developers want to make their programs look "special".

alwaysmc2
It's not stupid; It's advanced.