Oh, yeah, that was why...
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For the past few years, I didn't have a version of Visual Studio on my main PC (desktop). When I have had a bit of personal C# to write -- as for a challenge or similar here -- I used an old Win 8 thingy. Which has Visual Studio 2010 Express installed. And it was good. Now I have a proper laptop (Win 11) and I installed Visual Studio 2022 Pro. Today I was copying projects over to the new system and I tested a few to determine whether or not they still compile. They do, but they had to be upgraded from .net 4 to 4.8 -- which is OK. BUT I had forgotten that some of these have an old Installer project which is no longer supported. :sigh: Installers just aren't important enough to me to get me all excited about learning a new tool for creating them. I guess I just won't provide installers anymore. Or maybe -- just because I probably can -- compile with one version and create installers with the other... I suppose I can put Visual Studio 2010 Express on here for that.
I've used NSIS for installers for years now. I don't particularly like it but it does its job and I've used the same template script for so long that I don't feel like changing it. In the end is just like you said:
PIEBALDconsult wrote:
Installers just aren't important enough to me to get me all excited about learning a new tool for creating them.
Oh BTW: lately I've got into shipping one EXE applications just like in the days of good old DOS. They are fancy C++ thingies with an embedded HTTP server and all the UI done through a browser. All nicely packed in a single EXE that contains HTML, CSS, SQL, etc. It would probably make for a nice (and long) article but I don't see many people following on this path, so why bother!
Mircea
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I've used NSIS for installers for years now. I don't particularly like it but it does its job and I've used the same template script for so long that I don't feel like changing it. In the end is just like you said:
PIEBALDconsult wrote:
Installers just aren't important enough to me to get me all excited about learning a new tool for creating them.
Oh BTW: lately I've got into shipping one EXE applications just like in the days of good old DOS. They are fancy C++ thingies with an embedded HTTP server and all the UI done through a browser. All nicely packed in a single EXE that contains HTML, CSS, SQL, etc. It would probably make for a nice (and long) article but I don't see many people following on this path, so why bother!
Mircea
Mircea Neacsu wrote:
shipping one EXE applications
Yeah, that was supposed to be one of the major selling points of .net -- "install by copy" or whatever.
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Mircea Neacsu wrote:
shipping one EXE applications
Yeah, that was supposed to be one of the major selling points of .net -- "install by copy" or whatever.
DOS, .NET, whatever... plus ça change[^] :D PS Believe it or not, I've survived 20+ years without touching .NET and I don't plan to start now :)
Mircea (see my latest musings at neacsu.net)
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For the past few years, I didn't have a version of Visual Studio on my main PC (desktop). When I have had a bit of personal C# to write -- as for a challenge or similar here -- I used an old Win 8 thingy. Which has Visual Studio 2010 Express installed. And it was good. Now I have a proper laptop (Win 11) and I installed Visual Studio 2022 Pro. Today I was copying projects over to the new system and I tested a few to determine whether or not they still compile. They do, but they had to be upgraded from .net 4 to 4.8 -- which is OK. BUT I had forgotten that some of these have an old Installer project which is no longer supported. :sigh: Installers just aren't important enough to me to get me all excited about learning a new tool for creating them. I guess I just won't provide installers anymore. Or maybe -- just because I probably can -- compile with one version and create installers with the other... I suppose I can put Visual Studio 2010 Express on here for that.
Most of the time I make my apps self-installing - even my services.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Most of the time I make my apps self-installing - even my services.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
They have to get onto the system somehow.
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They have to get onto the system somehow.
Generally what I do (whenever possible) is a I ship a single executable. It contains the install code in it that runs on first launch. Obviously that doesn't work if you need to ship a bunch of dependencies with it. I made a thing called CSBrick that will take C# projects and turn them into a single large C# file so you can effectively wedge it into a project statically instead of linking to it as a DLL. It's here on codeproject if you want to use that to cut down on external dependencies.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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I've used NSIS for installers for years now. I don't particularly like it but it does its job and I've used the same template script for so long that I don't feel like changing it. In the end is just like you said:
PIEBALDconsult wrote:
Installers just aren't important enough to me to get me all excited about learning a new tool for creating them.
Oh BTW: lately I've got into shipping one EXE applications just like in the days of good old DOS. They are fancy C++ thingies with an embedded HTTP server and all the UI done through a browser. All nicely packed in a single EXE that contains HTML, CSS, SQL, etc. It would probably make for a nice (and long) article but I don't see many people following on this path, so why bother!
Mircea
Mircea Neacsu wrote:
Oh BTW: lately I've got into shipping one EXE applications just like in the days of good old DOS.
That's one thing that Apple does right. When you "install" an app on a Mac, you're litteally just copying a single file over that's really an archive of executables, libraries, and settings. No registry edits. No worrying about what goes where. You just copy a single file over to your app folder... done. Now, some Mac apps will have an "installer" but you don't need it since that's all it's doing... just copying over a single file.
Jeremy Falcon
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For the past few years, I didn't have a version of Visual Studio on my main PC (desktop). When I have had a bit of personal C# to write -- as for a challenge or similar here -- I used an old Win 8 thingy. Which has Visual Studio 2010 Express installed. And it was good. Now I have a proper laptop (Win 11) and I installed Visual Studio 2022 Pro. Today I was copying projects over to the new system and I tested a few to determine whether or not they still compile. They do, but they had to be upgraded from .net 4 to 4.8 -- which is OK. BUT I had forgotten that some of these have an old Installer project which is no longer supported. :sigh: Installers just aren't important enough to me to get me all excited about learning a new tool for creating them. I guess I just won't provide installers anymore. Or maybe -- just because I probably can -- compile with one version and create installers with the other... I suppose I can put Visual Studio 2010 Express on here for that.
FWIW, here's a link How to make a self extracting archive that runs your setup.exe with 7zip -sfx switch – Notes to self[^] I've used this method for over 12 years now. It's chained into my release tool and works well for me.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse "Hope is contagious"
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Generally what I do (whenever possible) is a I ship a single executable. It contains the install code in it that runs on first launch. Obviously that doesn't work if you need to ship a bunch of dependencies with it. I made a thing called CSBrick that will take C# projects and turn them into a single large C# file so you can effectively wedge it into a project statically instead of linking to it as a DLL. It's here on codeproject if you want to use that to cut down on external dependencies.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
i toyed with ILMerge a few times. It puts all of the project assemblies into a single exe. I stopped using it when I started writing WPF apps because it doesn't work with those.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013 -
i toyed with ILMerge a few times. It puts all of the project assemblies into a single exe. I stopped using it when I started writing WPF apps because it doesn't work with those.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013I initially was going that route, but I ran into issues with ILMerge with certain projects. It's been so long now I couldn't tell you what the issue was, but CSBrick was built because ILMerge didn't work in all cases.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
