How to deploy a windows program designed to run on PC without installation of the software

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Hi Friends!
I've developed a windows application program with the intention of using it on any computer without prior installation (just like flash play).
How to go about the deployment has been challenging to me.
Please, help me out.
Thank you.

Posted 14-May-14 5:10am

Salisu Shaibu

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[no name] 14-May-14 11:14am

If you don't have any dependencies on anything outside of the .NET stuff then copy/paste works most of the time. What exactly is the problem?

Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter 14-May-14 16:19pm

It's sounds nice at the first, but if you stop for a minute you understand that someone have to check if there are no external dependencies, and also .NET dependencies can be tricky. What if target computer has no the same .NET that application requires? So someone have to check that too...
And that's what exactly an installer does - check any kind of dependencies! To build an installer with Visual Studio is a matter of 10-15 minutes, than the application can be installed on any computer without wory, but the manual approach forces you to check every single computer from A to Z...

Rob Philpott 14-May-14 11:33am

What do you mean by deployment? It needs to be on the users machine in some form or another in order to execute. Are you just trying to avoid a traditional Windows installer? Who is the audience, is it the world or corporate? What is your application (forms/wpf/web/etc.)...

Salisu Shaibu 14-May-14 12:20pm

Form application I mean. I've seen some mini-applications without Windows installer. My application convert SI unit of length to other 12 units.

CHill60 14-May-14 12:42pm

See comment from Wes Aday ... just copy the exe onto the PC. You can also just copy a shortcut at the same time (into the appropriate folder). Nothing else required if your exe doesn't rely on anything else being installed.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 14-May-14 14:25pm

It is not always just the EXE. In many cases, it's not. It's safe to say that this should be a copy of output directory. The output should be designed reasonably.

Please see my answer.

—SA

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov · Answer 1 · 2014-05-14T08:23:00

This is a very usual way of deploy gaining more and more popularity, for some good reasons, and finally started to by encouraged by Microsoft. Installation contaminates system registry, not always provides clear clean-up, and often is not needed. The alternative packages are called "portable" in modern jargon, but there is nothing new about it.

All you need is to develop the application which works equally well when it is simply copied to any directory of any drive, including removable drives. There is nothing special about it. For the first deployment, you simply copy the content of your output directory (basically, for Release configuration) somewhere, on some network server or removable drive.

The application should make no assumptions on having any special directories, drives, their names, certain users and their names, anything; it should not modify any system setting or make any assumptions on such settings. As a matter of fact, this is a general requirement for any programming at all, but there are many developers who cannot meet it. If you cannot do it, you don't really do programming, no matter is it installable project or not.

Also, good more complex products comes in two versions: installable and "portable" (of course, based on the same code). Installation just add few steps providing some convenience to permanent use of the product: say, registers the file types to be opened with the installed software, and so on. Simpler products may never require anything like that.

—SA