I have a .net wpf app that I am deploying, including the .net4 client profile as well as some 3rd party components. I have created the deployment with VS2010 using a Setup and Deployment project. Not installshield. Pretty basic stuff.
When I generate my deployment I get the files from the setup projects Release directory. That contains myApplication.msi, Setup.exe, DotNetFX40Client folder, WindowsInstaller3_1 folder.
Instead of zipping this all up and having my users have to extract the files from the zip. Is there a way I can package this in an exe and just have the entire thing run. You know where they could just download like one 50 meg exe and double-click and have it start the install.
The way I’ve done seen this done, and practiced myself since, has been to utilise WinRAR in order to generate a self-extracting archive (an executable archive) – it not only supports this by consequence of the program’s nature, on the contrary, it has been purposely pondered: you can apply description and version attributes et cetera, along with the ability to specify an application setup icon.
You can do this via the application’s command line which means you can easily write a script to execute on, say, build of a release configuration. Use the GUI version to play around with all of the features until you get the desired output and then simply construct the correct command + argument string.
Lastly, the client does not need WinRAR installed on their own machine; that’s the point. 🙂