publish winforms application without install

Question

I've been creating winforms application for a while now, but i've never really published one to other people before.

Recently I started doing this but every time I publish my build, the user requires to de-install his current installation and install the new one.

Is there any way to remove this, so I'll only have to send a .exe file which they can use without any form of installing?

I've attempted to send the .exe file in the bin/debug/ but this only seems to work on computers where Visual Studio is installed.

Answer 1

Go to your solution and set the CopyLocal to true for all projects, this will ensure that the ..\Bin folder contains all the necessary assemblies for your program. Then just zip up the ..\Bin folder, get it onto the client machine, and then unzip it.

Hope this helps!