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Deploying Dlls necessary for running WinForm applications on a server
posted

Hi,

We have a common server we use to deploy all our custom WinForm applications. A frequent problem that occurs post-deployment from our local development environment (developer's work station) to the common production server we use for our WinForm apps is the application failing upon set up due to a missing dll.

This of course occurs, because because a developer from time to time forgets to specify Copy Local = True on the refererenced dll or sometimes the failure is in part due to dlls that were not added as references while in development that otherwise work in the local developers evironment only to rear their ugly head in a prompt window after deployment to the server such as below:

"Unable to install or run application. The application requires the assembly Infragistics4.Documents.IO.v11.2 Version 11.2.20112.1010 be installed int he Global Assembly Cache (GAC) first. Please contact your administrator"

That aside we are running a couple of editions Infragistics2 for some our older Winapps to Infragistics4 for the latest apps we're building.

To prevent this from happening over and over again per every deployment I feel it will be best to install all of the required dlls for each of the versions 2.0/3.5/4.0 in this server's GAC, which I am assuming is all that is necessary.

(I did read in one post somewhere that it wasn't recommended installing the entire SDK on a given server, but simply deploy the dlls to the common server's GAC where all apps are running) - given that the install creates paths such as C:\Program Files\Infragistics\NetAdvantage 2011.2\Windows Forms\........
CLR2.0
CLR3.5
CLR.40

What would be the best way to deploy and organize the dlls for each of these version for WinForms apps on this server?