weWithin our development environment we have VS2010 installed on my computer along with Expresison blend and silverlight4 tools. We have a separate build box where we compile and build the entire project. When running through the precompile I am receiving errors that references to the expression blend namespaces cannot be found. I assume this is due to the fact that expresison blend is not installed on the build box.
What is the best practice to prevent this from happening in the future? One solution presented was to just install expression blend on the build box but to me that seems unnecessary.
I have also thought of creating a lib direcotry within my project/solutions files and then add all assemblies there. Then within the references directory add them, but point to the lib directory within the project. I haven't done this only becuase if feels as if it is somewhat of a hack as I am basically creating duplicate dll's so there is no versioning or control over when a dll becomes updated etc that could potentially lead to problems down the road.
Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
After a little more research I found that microsoft offers two SDK's that you can install on the build-box and not be required to install Expression blend.
They are:
Microsoft Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=40EF0F31-CB95-426D-9CE0-00DCFABF3DF5&displaylang=en
Microsoft® Silverlight™ 4 SDK
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=55B44DA3-E5DE-4D2A-8EAF-1155CA6B3207&displaylang=en
Depending upon your output desktop app vs. silverlight you have the ability to install the expression libraries which will allow your solution to successfully compile.
I did refrain from the creation of the lib directory you loose all ability to version the assemblies in any sane manner.
Microsoft provides a redistributable installer for those Blend assemblies as part of Blend SDK. Install it and you will not need Blend itself to build the solution.
Related
I have moved from VS2015 to VS2019. I've created a deployment and all is good locally, here on three machines. But when I shipped a test MSI out to an old laptop we got an MFC140.dll not found. I found the dependency in one of my dlls, thought it had something to do with not moving it up to UNICODE. Did that and it still depends on MFC140U.dll
I do have
toolset (VS 2019)vs142
SDK Version 10.0(latest installed)
I've googled and pulled hair out. But the lights are not coming on. Checked, and this is also happening to a second dll I build.
So I check another app that goes into the deployment. It does not use any of my dlls. Yet it also depends on MFC140U.dll as well as MFC142U.dll. The only libs linked in this one are BOOST and SQLITE3. And those don't have any MFC dependencies. This just adds to my confusion.
The only thing that would make sense to me is that a vs142 build has some 140 dependency and the deployment system is not picking that up. Note that deployment is not done with install shield as was done with vs2015.
Yes, I could fix it by shipping the MFC140U.dll but that just does not seem right. Either I, or Microsoft, has something wrong is all I can figure.
UPDATE:
I created a fresh MFC project with VS2019 and looked at the depends. Same thing, this is about Microsoft. And it looks like the deployment system includes MFC142x dlls but not the MFC140 that is required.
You don't mention what your "deployment system" is, so I'm not sure what installer technology you are using here.
But your application or one of your DLL's has a dependency on MFC. If MFC isn't needed, you'll want to check your build settings on the exe or dll in question. The other item to check is if you are errantly including the afx.h header in your project. The afx.h has #pragma comment(lib, xxx) entries that resolve to the proper mfc140xxx.lib depending on your build options.
If the MFC dependency is legitimate, you should be installing the VC runtime components using the vsredist packages designed for just that purpose. These should be installed to your hard drive under a path similar to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Enterprise\VC\Redist\MSVC\14.21.27702
Alternatively, you can download the latest using the following link:
The latest supported Visual C++ downloads
Sincerely,
The reason I ask is I want a small installation size and I only use the product for writing code for school work. I will not need 3rd party software, web capability, or integration with other software and applications.
In a comment now you requested for "command line to run the web installer in a certain predefined way say only download and install visual studio core editor and.net components". BTW, the recommendation including installing .NET components was a part of my original answer- now I splitted the answers, one for minimal install and this one for what you requested secondly, including .NET Visual Studio components:
The command line to install core and .net minimal is:
vs_xxxx.exe --layout %CD%\vs2017offline --lang en-US --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.ManagedDesktop
(set your individual downloaded .exe name for 'vs_xxxx.exe', my downloaded name was for example 'vs_enterprise__873301792.1489161815.exe')
The new installer for Visual Studio gives you a lot of flexibility about which components to install. By default, you'll have no additional features selected. VS will only install what it calls the Visual Studio core editor, which is described as:
The Visual Studio core shell experience including syntax-aware code editing, source code control and work item management.
With this, you'll get support for TextMate language grammars (you can install any you want), but you won't have the overhead of installing any language services or project types. So far, VS is a glorified editor; this minimal install will take 600MB. If you're looking for something smaller, you should probably consider Visual Studio Code instead.
Workloads
The first tab of the new VS installer is the Workloads section. This gives you some pre-packaged feature groups targeted at specific development platforms. There are separate categories of workloads (Windows, Web, Gaming, and Other) and taking the Windows category for example, there are 3 different workloads available: UWP, .NET Desktop (like WinForms and WPF), and C++ Desktop development.
Each workload has required and optional features. Some of the optional features will be selected by default as they are "recommended". You can slim down by unselecting these.
If the workloads are too heavy-handed for you, you can use...
Individual components
On this tab, you can piece together any single components you want. If a workload seems too large, you can see what components it would install, then go to this tab and pick the smaller set you would like.
Note that some components do have dependencies (sometimes numerous), and the installer will show you all of the dependent packages added. If you try to remove them, it will notify you of dependent components that will also be removed.
You have the following alternatives:
1.
Minimal Visual Studio: Start the standard Visual Studio web installer, and select nothing, then you get the minimal installation for only the development environment (IDE), especially editor.
2.
If this is too big for you, you can use something similar to Visual Studio, for example, you can Visual Studio Code editor or you can use SharpDevelop as an alternative to Visual Studio. Open Source and smaller footprint.
You can work with every editor on the commandline using "csc.exe myhomework.cs" (CSharp compiler).
3.
The solution with smallest footprint (without Visual Studio):
Just use the editor you are used to, even notepad is possible: Depending on your .NET version and Windows directory, the compiler can be found for example here:
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\csc.exe
or
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\csc.exe
The 64 bit versions of those you get in the mirrored folders "Framework64" instead of "Framework"..
Normally you would like to download the whole .NET SDK (developer pack) additionally, but for a single homework, csc.exe might be enough.
Here is the developer pack for .NET 6.2 framework (Visual Studio uses that as kind of a kernel too).
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=53321
How can I deploy my Win32 application as an EXE application so that others (who don't have VC++ installed) can use it?
I am using VC++ 2010 on Windows 7.
If you switch to "Release" mode when you compile your finished program (rather than "Debug", which you use for debugging it during development), you should get an executable that will run on a computer without Visual Studio installed.
However, that executable will still require the appropriate version of the C runtime library to be installed. For example, if you developed it in Visual C++ 2010, you will need version 10 of the CRT installed. This is a freely redistributable library, downloadable here.
So, you have several options for deployment:
Manual Deployment
Give people the bare executable file, and include the installer for the redistributable in another folder on the installation media. If they copy the executable to disk and cannot run it because they get an error message, they should install the CRT libraries from the included redistributable installer. Then the executable will run just fine.
This works great if you have relatively a computer-savvy audience, or you're deploying to a fixed range of machines (like across a school or corporation). But it doesn't work so well for general deployment to customers.
In fact, you don't even need the installer. You can just place the CRT DLLs in the same folder as your executable and it will run just fine. This is how I test apps I'm developing on clean VMs. It works like a charm. There's no need to run the CRT installer at all. You'll find these required libraries as part of your Visual Studio installation:
<Program Files folder>\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\redist\x86
Automated Deployment
Create a setup program that automatically installs your application along with any dependencies it requires, including the CRT redistributable. This is what you see most commercial applications doing. I recommend it for anything but the most trivial of apps.
Full versions of Visual Studio 2010 (i.e., not Express versions) can create a Setup Project that you can customize as needed to work as an installer for your application. But this is no longer the recommended way to create an installer, and this functionality has been removed from the latest version of Visual Studio, 2012.
So I recommend using something else, even if you have an older version of VS where the Setup Project is available. No point in wasting time creating something you'll just have to update later. My personal favorite choices for creating setup programs are WiX and Inno Setup. Both are free, and extensive documentation is available online.
Creating simple setups that don't have to do very much is really quite straightforward—this is likely the case for you, as all you need to do is install the CRT redistributable if it is not already there. I'd be willing to bet money you can find a walkthrough or example online for how to do this in either WiX or Inno Setup.
If you need to do more complicated stuff, both of these setup packages support it. They are extensively customizable and very powerful, it just takes more work to get it all going.
Static Linking
If you absolutely need to be able to distribute a bare executable that is guaranteed to simply work when double-clicked, you will need to switch your project to statically link in the required runtime libraries. This means that all of the CRT code is actually embedded by the linker directly into your executable, and means that you don't have to redistribute the CRT libraries separately.
The disadvantage of this approach is that the only way to benefit from improvements, bug fixes, and security patches released for the CRT is to recompile and redistribute your application. If you dynamically link (the default), your app will automatically benefit from enhancements to the installed version of the CRT libraries. Microsoft strongly recommends against static linking.
To switch between these modes in Visual Studio, follow these steps:
Right-click on your project in the Solution Explorer and select "Properties".
Ensure that the "Release" configuration is selected in the drop-down box at the top of the dialog.
Expand the "C/C++" item in the TreeView, and select "Code Generation".
Change the setting of the "Runtime Library" option to "Multi-threaded (/MT)".
A further description on what these cryptic compiler switches mean and which ones you should use when is given in my answer here.
Final Note: The "Debug" versions of the CRT libraries are not redistributable, but that doesn't matter because you should always distribute the "Release" build of your app anyway, never the "Debug" build.
In general, the odds are pretty good your EXE file will run on any version of Windows you built it on or higher.
All bets off, for example, if you built using Visual Studio 2012 Professional on Windows 7, and you try to run it on Windows 95. But otherwise, you're probably safe :)
The best way to test if you have any dependencies is to install and run on a "clean machine".
The best way to get (and reuse) a "clean machine" is with a VM.
I recommend VMWare. But Virtual Box and Windows Virtual PC are also viable choices.
As far as an installer, I'd strongly encourage you to look at InnoSetup
I hope that helps!
Make sure you build in release mode. As Floris Velleman said, you're using unneeded libraries for standalone executable.
For more information, you can check Compiler Options (MSDN).
I'm using the Visual Studio Setup project. If I go to the properties of the Setup project, it lets me choose which pre-reqs are required, at which point I choose the C++ Redistributable.
On some systems, this works fine - but recently my users are reporting that the install failed because "A newer version of Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable has been detected on the machine."
What's the proper way to do this? Is Visual Studio's detection fouled up somehow and unable to detect C++?
Yuck, this is ugly. I was wondering what would happen after Microsoft gave up on the side-by-side install of the runtime DLLs for VS2010. Seems clear, the interwebs are full of this installer error. The biggest victim seems to be Microsoft itself with Streets and Maps failing to install.
I'm not aware of any security patches for it so I have to guess that you haven't updated to SP1 yet. And your customers use a product of a vendor that did. This is a battle that you're always going to lose some day. Do consider taking advantage of the app-local deployment for the DLLs, copying them in the same directory as your main EXE. Simply copy them from the vc/redist directory before putting the setup package together, no need to tick the prerequisite. You'll need:
msvcr100.dll and msvcp100.dll for the regular CRT
atl100.dll if you use ATL
mfc100.dll, mfc100u.dll, mfcm100.dll, mfc100u.dll if you use MFC (u = Unicode, m = managed)
mfc100xxx.dll where xxx is the 3 letter language code if you use MFC on a non-English machine
vcomp100.dll if you use OpenMP in your code.
Only disadvantage is that they won't get updated if there's a security patch. That could be an advantage too, depending on what color glasses you wear. If you're uncomfortable about it then keeping the machine that creates the setup package updated, including enabling Windows Update, is an important requirement.
The default Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable uses a Product Code for detection. So Visual C++ 2010 SP1 Redistributable is not detected as installed. This is why the package tries to install it and fails.
A good solution is to create your own custom prerequisite which uses a better detection criteria. Here is an article which may help you:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astebner/archive/2010/05/05/10008146.aspx
Visual Studio setup projects do not support custom prerequisite creation. However, it can be done by manually generating the required manifests.
You can find the manifests structure here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229223(VS.80).aspx
These manifests can be generated automatically with the Bootstrapper Manifest Generator tool.
After generating the package manifests, you can add all these files (including the package) in a separate folder in the Visual Studio prerequisites folder, for example:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bootstrapper\Packages\
This way Visual Studio will show the prerequisite in your setup project properties page.
I want to perform a .NET CF 2.0 build using VS2010. I know it's not supported "normnally," but I've seen this answer: ( .NET Compact Framework with Visual Studio 2010? ) ...and I want to use that approach.
The blog post cited there says I need to modify the .csproj files for the .NET CF projects, to point to a particular Microsoft.CompactFramework.Common.targets . But I don't have that file.
I figured I needed to install the Windows Mobile 6 Standard SDK to get it.
I tried installing it and get this:
I have seen this question:
Windows Mobile 6 Standard SDK Refresh install issue on Visual Studio 2010 Professional Beta 2
I don't think the solution proposed there is workable for me. I do not have VS2008. I do not have VS2005. I have only VS2010, and I have no installable media for those other products.
I have also tried the administrative install (msiexec /a), but the resulting directory structure doesn't contain any files like Microsoft.CompactFramework.Common.targets .??
Q1:
Is there a way for me to install WM6 Standard SDK?
Q2: Anyone know the reg key that it looks for to determine if I have the appropriate pre-reqs?
Is this going to work if I just fiddle with my registry?
Q3: Is my assumption wrong? Really I want the Microsoft.CompactFramework.Common.targets file and its friends. Where can I get this? (I have no existing VS2008 machine to suck from)
Q4: Another approach I can think of is getting an eval version of VS2008, installing that into a VM, then installing the WM6 Std SDK there, then grabbing the Microsoft.CompactFramework.Common.targets file from that. Long way round. Is this gonna work and is it worth the trouble?
ANSWER
Here's the answer.
It is possible to build CF apps with VS2010, as outlined in Joel Fjorden's blog post. There are pre-requisites you need, in order to make this happen.
I believe the only official way to get the required files, including Microsoft.CompactFramework.Common.targets , Microsoft.CompactFramework.CSharp.targets , Microsoft.CompactFramework.VisualBasic.targets and Microsoft.CompactFramework.Build.Tasks.dll , is to install the related version of Visual Studio. These files are all version-specific, so to get the files for building for .NET CF 2.0, you need to install VS2005, and for .NET CF 3.5 you need to install VS2008. Installing VS2010 gives you neither. It works to use eval versions of the tools. It worked for me anyway.
If you are willing to go custom, you can simply copy these files from a working installation of VS2005 or VS2008 (or both), into the appropriate .NET directory, usually something like C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727 (change the version as appropriate). Chris Tacke has helpfully posted a link to the files you need. I don't know if copying these files violates the license for VS20?? , I am not a licensing expert.
You cannot get these files from the Windows Mobile SDK, as far as I can tell. Even so, you might still want a version-specific mobile SDK to get the emulators and skins and so on.
This is a basic "build" capability. It works but it doesn't give you designer support, debugging capability, built-in project templates, and so on. My advice to anyone who wants to do forward development on .NET CF is to use the tools that are geared toward those tasks - VS2005 or VS2008.
Thanks to Chris Tacke for posting a link for the files.
Not sure if it's any help, but the CF targets files from VS2008 can be found here. Let us know if you make any progress.
The "Power Toys for .NET Compact Framework" package (currently found at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=13442) also contains the required files.
Thought I'd leave that here since it's an official Microsoft download.