Application Deployment

Hi,

Just wondering if anyone can give me some advice RE: deploying a finished application.

I have a finished (simple) winforms project, and I would like to distribute it. However I am not entirely sure how to go about this - and what is supposed to be included in the distribution. I would like to use an installer something like MSI, but I am having difficulty working out how everything goes together.

Has anyone had any experience with this, and does this result in overly large files if you have to include the CLR as well? The project was written using Borlands C# Builder.

I don't know Borlands way of doing things, but maybe it's similar.
With Microsoft's Visual Studio you create an Installer/Setup Project that will produce an MSI file to install your application. You have to provide the .NET framework seperatly as this is Microsofts policy on it since Version 1.1.

The installer size depends on your application. The release .NET setup is 21 MB.

Thanks for that. That is what I thought, it is the same as Visual C++ .NET, if you have Visual C# .NET.

But Borland (bare in mind I am using the free builder version), doesn't seem to have the option built in for creating an installer project. I would assume because it is not intended for commercial apps (which this project is not).

The help talks about using creating an installer using MSI to deploy the app, but it takes it for granted that you know how to do this.. and I don't. :)

[edit]: 21 MB + the size of the app is pretty nasty for an initial install, how would you go about distributing that via the web for instance. Would it be a matter of having two versions of the installer, one with one without the runtime environment? Or should you just be mean and inform the user that they must download the .NET runtime?

The official MS policy is to create one setup for your application and provide either a link to Microsoft or the Framework installer itself as a seperate download.

Cheers, thanks. ;)