Recently I posted a message about deploying an application over a network. I had the .net framework installed on the pcs, the local intranet set to full trust, and I had copied the bin directory to the production location. However, I didn't have any trouble running the program on any pcs that had visual studio 2003 installed on it. So, there was no problem with any development machines. However, some non-development machines would run the application fine and others wouldn't. The problem seems to have been caused by not all of the appropriate dlls being in the bin location. I figured this out because I created a deployment project instead of just copying the bin folder and it worked on one of the pcs that I had trouble. The deployment project included some dlls that were not in the bin directory. After doing a directory comparison on the machine where I installed the program and it worked with the networked location I found the network location didn't have the same files. I copied all the files from the local machine installation directory to the networked location and everything worked
I am very new to actually deploying applications myself. So, maybe this was really the first thing I should have checked.
First, how do I know which dlls I need to have? Do I just look at the references section of my project and the path location to determine the dll? I know this is probably a stupid question to most of you, but I would appreciate any tips
Second, there are several directories visual studio creates. Sometimes it creates a debug directory, obj, or release directory. I found when it creates the debug and release directories, but why does it create both of them and what is the purpose of the obj directory?
Third, why doesn't visual studio put all of the appropriate dlls in a directory that it creates. In other words, why are only some of the dlls the application needs located in the bin directory. Does it make a difference if the project was upgraded from vb6 or is created from scratch in vb.net
Fourth, is using the deployment projects the best way to deploy the projects
Thanks
