Question

I am working on a Project which uses SQL Server,Crystal Report. And the project is almost complete and i am going to publish it.

Now I dont want to add the Prerequisites for the project as it will make the size of the exe to some 400mb but my application exe is just 4mb.

Now currently i have seen something in the Reference Section of Project Properties..
That is the dll Control that i am using for Buttons has the Column called Copy Local with a value of True but for CrystalDecission.Shared its just False, so is this value changing to True helps me or not… that is i should not have to include as Prerequisites for crystal report..

Help me in this.. Similarly for Sql Server and others

Answer 1

You should use the prerequisites option in the setup and deployment project – by default it will attempt to download any missing dependencies from the Internet, and will give a sensibly sized MSI and EXE package (there are options for when deploying on media to include the dependencies alongside, too)

For Crystal Reports in particular, you have to use a deployment package, as portions of the applciation rely on COM objects that must be registered, in a specific order. Using the deployment package avoids having to reverse engineer this nastiness, as well as coping with differing processor architectures, locales, etc.