Package whole C# Console application in one file?

Question

Is it possible to package a whole c# console application with it's applications folder/files into one executable .exe file so it dosen't need to be installed on the computer when it's going to run?

Answer 1

If it doesn't have a lot of resource DLLs (with translated strings, in separate subfolders) then you can use ILMerge to do this for the DLL files:

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/mbarnett/ilmerge.aspx

ILMerge is a utility that can be used to merge multiple .NET assemblies into a single assembly.

If you have other files too, you will have to add them as resources to your program and extract them at run-time.

See here for more details on how to embed resource files and extract them at run-time:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/319292

Briefly: After you have added an embedded resource to your project, you do this:

 var assembly = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
 var stream = assembly.GetManifestResourceStream("MyNamespace.MyResourceFileName");

 // ... do something with stream, e.g. write it out to a file.

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[EDIT]

You can actually do away with ILMerge altogether and have a much more robust solution.

See here for details: http://blog.nenoloje.com/2011/08/better-alternative-to-ilmerge.html

And here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_press/archive/2010/02/03/jeffrey-richter-excerpt-2-from-clr-via-c-third-edition.aspx

The author of ILMerge says of this "As the author of ILMerge, I think this is fantastic! If I had known about this, I never would have written ILMerge"

It's written by Jeffrey Richter, who I hope most people here will have heard of. :)