I use vb.net for in-house development of apps. Many of these apps are
small in size, with few if any referenced dlls. I'd like my apps to be
*totally* self-contained--that is, I want to be able to drag and drop
the contents of the app's directory onto a new machine and have it run
*with no installation procedures*.
In the past (vb.net 2003) this seemed relatively reliable, assuming that
the dotnet framework was in place and that any referenced dlls or
third-party components had their CopyLocal property set to TRUE. Since
switching to vb.net 2006, this does not always seem to be the case. Apps
that I have ported from 2003 to 2006, fail to run with errors like "The
app encountered a problem....blah blah send a report to microsoft".
Is there a 100% accurate manner of making an app totally self-contained
in that it will run on a machine with the (proper) dotnet framework
installed? If not, is there a manner in which a more accurate error
report can be generated on a (non-developer) machine with a bit more
useful information--such as exactly what is missing?