C# console app deployment

Question

I have a simple C# console application developed on my local machine using VS2008 Pro. I want to know how to deploy this solution onto a network share folder?

A similar Java console program is already placed (as a JAR file) in the same network share folder. Users simply open command prompt, navigate to shared folder and type "java -jar programName.jar inputParameter1 inputParameter2"

How can I achieve the same with .NET?

Solution 1

You can copy the exe over yourself, go to the bin folder in the directory your source code is in and copy it there.

or you can click the BUILD menu and use the PUBLISH menu item. This will allow you to enter the path to your network share and visual studio will copy the built app to the folder for you.

Solution 2

If your application is really "simple", you should be able to just copy the files to a shared folder and run it from there. However, if your "simple" application tries to do things that are restricted by the permissions you might have to configure them with caspol. Assemblies loaded from a shared drive have much fewer permissions than the ones loaded from a local drive.

Solution 3

It would be mostly the same process as the Java program. To deploy, compile the program and copy the exe from the bin folder (along with any dependencies) to the network share.

To run the program users would open the command prompt, navigate to shared folder, and type "programName.exe inputParameter1 inputParameter2"

Solution 4

You can use Publish feature of VS. Note that you can change settings in the Publish section of the console application project to remove some features that you don't need. For instance the renaming of .dll and .exe files by appending the '.deploy' extension to the name of the files or publishing in a new 'version' folder each time. Go to "Project Properties"->"Publish" and remove "Automatically increment revision" checkbox at "Publish Version", click "Options..." button and clear all checkboxes there too.

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