Deploy Crystal Report dlls only using ClickOnce without using prerequisite .msi

Question

I believe the conventional way to deploy Crystal Report with a .NET program is to set it as a prerequisite in the publish settings and then a .msi will be packaged with the ClickOnce files on the web/network/CD/wtv. When the user runs setup.exe, it will check whether Crystal Report is on the client computer. If not, it runs the Crystal Report .msi. But that will always require admin rights.

My question is, is it possible to package Crystal Report's dlls along with other application's output assemblies so that no explicit install is required? My application makes use of many many components and including a dll with the install is sufficient for most of them. Could I do the same with Crystal Report?

Answer 1

If you are dead-set on doing it yourself, you can monitor the installation of the Crystal Reports runtime to see what files/registry entries/settings it creates/modifies. Alternatively, you can decompile the msi or download and decompile the mst transform file from Crystal Reports. Once you know what it is doing, write something to do it yourself.