How do you create a standalone exe in Visual Studio? [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Embedding DLLs in a compiled executable

I want to compile my C# application to a single exe file. The problem is that my project depends on many other projects resulting in many dlls in the Release folder when I compile it. Is there any way to just make an exe with these dlls included?

Note: It does not need to be independent from the .NET framework. I assume that anyone using this exe will have that installed.

Answer 1

.NET ships with a tool called ILMerge where multiple assemblies can be packaged together into a single file. You would use it like:

ilmerge /target:winexe /out:myoneexecutable.exe Foo.exe Bar1.dll Bar2.dll

Answer 2

ILMerge is one option, but it can't merge WPF assemblies. You can embed assemblies as resources and dynamically load them. See this Richter article.