In my applications, I have elected to install the prerequisites in one centralized location on our company's file server.

Setup Project > Properties Pages > Prerequisites... > Download prerequisites from the following location:

Here, I specify our company's file server \\FS1\Public Files\InstallerSupport

This folder contains all prerequisites for all of our company's applications.

However, every time I rebuild my project, all of the prerequisites are copied to my project's bin folder.

Is there a way I can tell the compiler that I really, *really* want it to copy the prerequisites to the network drive instead of to my PC?

(Not exactly a C# question, but C# developers are the ones who would know how to deal with this)

Regards,
Joe Pool

Are you trying to build the prerequisites, or use them?

What you've done is told the compiler that your applications prerequisites are on the network drive. This way, when you build your application, it's going to know where to go get anything it needs, and will copy it locally. That's the required behavior in order to get your application to run, since it'll need to have a copy of the prerequisites sitting around where the CLR can find them when your application is run.

If you want to copy your build results up to the folder instead, you'll want to unset this option. Then, add a post build script to copy the build up to the network folder.

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Reed Copsey, Jr. - http://reedcopsey.com

Hi jp2msft,

Sorry for the late reply. When we choose Download prerequisites from the following location in a Setup Project, we need to pay attention on the differences between the Debug output and the Release output:

· Debug: The prerequisites would be copied to the Debug directory.

· Release: The prerequisites would not be copied to the Release directory.

Based on my understanding, in debug mode, we need to copy the prerequisites to do some special testing. We can still debug the project when the prerequisites are not located on the network location. The release output would be published, so we do not need to copy the prerequisites.

You can get more information about how to deploy prerequisites from:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/7eh4aaa5(VS.80).aspx.

Let me know if this helps.
Aland Li

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Please mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark if they don't. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Are you trying to build the prerequisites, or use them?

What you've done is told the compiler that your applications prerequisites are on the network drive. This way, when you build your application, it's going to know where to go get anything it needs, and will copy it locally. That's the required behavior in order to get your application to run, since it'll need to have a copy of the prerequisites sitting around where the CLR can find them when your application is run.

If you want to copy your build results up to the folder instead, you'll want to unset this option. Then, add a post build script to copy the build up to the network folder.

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Reed Copsey, Jr. - http://reedcopsey.com

Hmmm... OK, so why does Visual Studio continue to generate the requirement files (.NET Framework) in the bin folder?

Is this so I can say, "Oh, here they are!" and copy them out there myself every time?

It seems to me like selecting the location for the prerequisites should indicate to the compiler where prerequisites should be copied to, rather than it copying those requirements to the bin folder for me to move myself:




Do I understand you correctly that Visual Studio will not copy my prerequisites to one centralized location?

If I have 10 applications that all use the same prerequisites, it seems wasteful of Visual Studio to recreate those requirement files for every project every time I do a build and store all of those identical files separately.

Hi jp2msft,

Sorry for the late reply. When we choose Download prerequisites from the following location in a Setup Project, we need to pay attention on the differences between the Debug output and the Release output:

· Debug: The prerequisites would be copied to the Debug directory.

· Release: The prerequisites would not be copied to the Release directory.

Based on my understanding, in debug mode, we need to copy the prerequisites to do some special testing. We can still debug the project when the prerequisites are not located on the network location. The release output would be published, so we do not need to copy the prerequisites.

You can get more information about how to deploy prerequisites from:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/7eh4aaa5(VS.80).aspx.

Let me know if this helps.
Aland Li

---

Please mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark if they don't. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.