How to package .NET Core 3 in Visual Studio Installer Project

Question

So, I want to create an installer for my .NET Core 3 based C# project. I installed the Installer Projects extension for Visual Studio 2019 and created a new Installer project within my solution. After some trying around with different settings, I ended up with adding PublishItemsOutputGroup for my two executables to the Application Folder. This (throwing various warnings for duplicate dlls) creates a nice installer package with "supposedly" all required dlls (there are quite a lot of .net libs). However, upon executing one of the installed exe files on a target computer, I am getting:

It was not possible to find any compatible framework version
The specified framework 'Microsoft.NETCore.App', version '3.0.0' was not found.
  - Check application dependencies and target a framework version installed at:
      C:\Program Files\dotnet
  - Installing .NET Core prerequisites might help resolve this problem:
      https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=798306&clcid=0x409
  - The .NET Core framework and SDK can be installed from:
      https://aka.ms/dotnet-download
  - The following versions are installed:
      2.2.7 at [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]

I know, I could create a gigantic self-contained .exe when publishing the .exe files, however, that seems kind of wasteful to me - creating two gigantic .exe files that contain mostly the same .dlls anyways.

Is there no way to include a .NET Core 3 setup in the installer project as well? I can't find anything on that topic on the internet...

Answer 1

I found this as had same problem, but eventually worked out if you set the publishProfilePath setting in the Installer Project it will include all the files and works fine.