I have a clickonce application, and there are some prerequisites that need to be installed (that are not included in the standard list).

I have searched the web, and keep coming back to "how to create your own custom prerequisites" tutorials, etc, and I am completely gobsmacked that it can be so difficult, and that no-one has created a library of these files.

I don't want to have to learn about all that ***, i just want to make sure that Jet 4 & the 2007 Office System Driver is installed when someone runs my app.

Does anyone know where I can get a copy of whatever it is I need to add these as a prerequisite?

Or will have to be the 50,000th person to do the exact same process of creating my own?

Regards

Ben

Hi Ben,

As far as I know, you need to provide these prerequisites yourself since Visual Studio doesn’t provide it for you. The prerequisites you provided are not used very highly, and I think that the reason why Visual Studio doesn’t provide it. Here is some information for you to custom a prerequisite, and it will benefit you in a long term.

· Authoring a Custom Bootstrapper Package for Visual Studio 2005
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa730839(VS.80).aspx

· Adding Custom Prerequisites
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms165429(VS.80).aspx

Hope this helps.
Best regards.
Rong-Chun Zhang

Windows Forms General FAQs
Windows Forms Data Controls and Databinding FAQs

Hi Rong-Chun Zhang (should I call you Zhang, or Rong-Chun?)

Thanks for the reply, but as I mentioned in my original post, I have seen all the "how-to" sites, and I have downloaded and run the Manifest Generator, and thare are about 50 properties that I have no idea about, and don't seem to be documented or mentioned in any of these tutorials...

My question was, actually, why isn't there somewhere on the web (and by "the web", mean msdn) where I can download a "prerequisite" that another user has uploaded, or if there isn't one there for the package I need, then when I create one, I can upload it to the collection.

To be completely honest, I don't want to spend the time to learn about bootstrappers and manifests, I have an application to finish. I would even be happy to pay (say $10) for one of these "prerequites", cause it's going to take me a couple of hours to figure it out, and my time is better spent on core activities.

When you consider the number of people who are using .net and clickonce, and even if a tiny percentage needed to make their own prerequisite (s), and each one of those had to spend a couple of hours figuring it all out, we're talking thousands and thousands of person-hours, all duplicating the same effort. Why?

Sorry if I'm getting a bit philosophical here, I'm just frustrated.

Regards

Ben

Did you try running the BMG to create a prerequisite, using all the defaults, and then just deploying it and then trying it out to see if it worked?

RobinS.

GoldMail.com

Hi Robin

No, I didn't.

I don't mean to be rude, but did you install Visual Studio, open the "Movie Collection Starter Kit", build it, and give it to your clients? Of course not.

Once again, the entire point of my original post seems to have been overlooked or ignored.

Yes, I could probably figure out how it works with a bit of research, but I really don't have the headspace at the moment.

I'm not the kind of programmer who just "tries with the defaults", because invariably there is someone out there with a system that is not a "default" setup, and it looks unprofessional when things break.

I guess I will just have to take the time to learn an entirely new technology, that I will never need to use again,just to add a prerequisite to my application, like how-many-thousands of other developers before me.

Seems like wasted resources to me.

Ben

LOL.

Let's see. You come into a forum, ask for help, berate the person who tries to help you, refuse to do a little trial & error to see how it works, and then complain about having to figure itout so you can get your job done.

Good luck with that!

RobinS.

<grin>

Sorry, didn't mean to upset you.... I'm just frustrated!

I live for trial and error, cause most of the stuff I do hasn't been done before, andI love the challenge of creating innovative solutions to novel problems.

But... If I need a datagrid (for example)that can do stuff that the standard one can't, I don't spend 2 weeks writing one, I buy one from someone who already spent the time to understand and build one.

And when I overcome some problem that had me stumped, I post the details so others can share the fruits of my labors.

Right now, I don't have the time to figure this out, and I just want to be able to download something that works, that I can shove in my project and forget about.

Like i said earlier, I'd be happy to pay for this, and i don't understand why it needs to be so complicated.

Ben

I wasn't upset. I understood your frustration. I answers hundreds of question in these forums, but when I post a question, I never seem to get any answers. So much for karma. <g>

<offhand comment>I don't like to use 3rd party controls, because then I am bound to that company for the life of the product. I hate that. </offhand comment>

I am assuming you googled your redistributable name and "clickonce" and "prerequisite" and did not find anything. In that case, I would assume that if anyone has done this, they are keeping quiet about it.

You could always open a query with Microsoft -- a paid support call -- and get help doing what you are trying to do.

You could also post your question to a usenet group like microsoft.public.dotnet.framework. Frankly, I have better response in those groups on most topics than I do in the MSDN forums.

There are many microsoft.public.dotnet.* newsgroups, but the framework is probably the one you want. Or microsoft.public.dotnet.general.

If you post to both of them, cross-post (post to both at one time by putting both in the address) rather than multi-post (post each one separately), because many people (like myself) read all of the groups, and it annoys people when you multi-post, and sometimes they won't answer because of that. If you cross-post, and someone answers it in one group, it will show up in the other one as well.

If you don't use Windows Mail or Outlook Express, you can get to the groups through Google. Http://www.google.com/groups Just search for the group name, and you can post and read messages that way.

Good luck.

RobinS.

GoldMail.com

I have been in the exact same position and was amazed that it is still this difficult and I now today find myself in the exact same position with Access 2007. Some people must be happy with ludicrious before install instructions rather than elegant solutions. Disappointing, AGAIN!!!

You shouldn't be deploying Access2007 as a prerequisite. That is an Office application and requires its own license key for each user.

RobinDotNet

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