Can .Net Application be converted into a Portable App i.e. single .exe

Question

Can a .Net application be converted into a single .exe portable application?

i.e. no installer, it just runs?

I imagine all the dll's, resources etc need embedding into the exe? If so, how would I do this?

Thanks

Answer 1

You could use ILMerge to merge all assemblies into a single executable. But you still need the framework runtime installed. To turn your executable into a native executable you may take a look at this question.

Answer 2

No - you can't statically include the .net runtime in your own application

Answer 3

Yes, a .NET application can be a single .exe file. You can either only write one assembly with no dependencies outside of the .NET framework, or you can combine multiple assemblies into one using ILMerge. The user will still need the appropriate version of the .NET framework installed, though; there's no way around that.