Deploying .EXE to network drive? [closed]

Question

What are the problems with deploying an .EXE to a network drive and having users execute the .EXE over the network?

The advantage is that upgrades only need to be made to the one location. What are the disadvantages?

Answer 1

I would instead consider creating an MSI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Installer) file for your application and a Group Policy to facilitate distribution throughout your company (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/816102).

There are a number of freeware MSI tools. Good ones that come to mind are http://www.advancedinstaller.com/ and http://wix.codeplex.com/

Answer 2

The EXE is one thing, but you also need to consider any DLLs and other shared resources that may be associated with the app.

Some DLLs may be shipped with the EXE - you'd have to put those on the remote drive with the EXE, which would cause additional network traffic if it needed to use them.

Other DLLs may be part of Windows, but there could be versioning issues here if your workstations have different versions of windows or even different service packs or patches but they're all running a common version of the app.

And what about licensing? Does the app's license actually allow you to install it on a network drive - many software companies are very specific about this sort of thing, so you need to really be careful if you don't want to get caught out.

In short, it sounds like a good idea to get a quick win for your deployment management, but it probably causes far more issues than it solves.

If you really want to go down this path, you maybe should consider alternatives like remote desktop (eg Citrix or Terminal Server) or something like that - there are much better ways of achieving your goals than just sticking everything on a network drive.