About deploying EXEs
All ArcGIS .NET customizations require the following three items to be present on target machines:
- The correct version of the .NET Framework. For detailed information on supported .NET Framework versions, see System requirements.
- The appropriate ArcGIS installation. This provides the ESRI primary interop assemblies, which the setup program installs in the global assembly cache (GAC). For example, deploying a stand-alone geographic information system (GIS) application that only requires an ArcGIS Engine license requires an ArcGIS Engine Runtime installation on target machines.
- The executable code and resources for your .NET customization.
.NET support is a separate option in the ArcGIS installation; this needs to be selected during installation on both the development and target machines for .NET customizations to succeed. If you did not install .NET support originally, you can run the installation program again and choose the Modify option to add features to your ArcGIS installation.
If your customization is a stand-alone application, deploying it to either ArcGIS Engine or ArcGIS Desktop target machines can be as simple as copying a single executable file to the target machine, if your project output is a single executable file with no dependencies.
A more complex stand-alone application may involve a more complicated deployment, such as creating a custom install and setup program, if your solution includes multiple executable files and/or dynamic-link libraries (DLLs) and resources.
Remember that all dependencies must also be packaged and deployed; however, the ESRI ArcGIS primary interop assemblies, Stdole primary interop assembly (which is included in the ArcGIS installation), and .NET Framework should already be installed on the target machine.
See Also:
Deploying in-process componentsHow to create a custom install program
