Deploying a wpf application by giving the release folder of Visual Studio Solution

Question

I am going to deploy/publish a wpf application to users by simply giving(via inno setup compiler) the Release folder of Visual Studio 2012 solution. But I think I do not want all the files coming from there because some may for the purpose for Visual Studio. SO what are the files that I can remove to reduce that size of my deployment ? Thank you in advance.

Accepted Answer

You'll probably have the following files in your `Release` directory after build:

```
MyApp.exe
MyApp.pdb
MyApp.exe.config
MyApp.vshost.exe
MyApp.vshost.exe.config
MyApp.vshost.exe.manifest
```

Files you have to include in deployment:

```
MyApp.exe
MyApp.exe.config
```

`.exe.config` contains default application settings and has to be deployed unless you use settings designer in which case default values will be embedded in the assembly itself.

Files you can optionally include in deployment:

```
MyApp.pdb
```

`.pdb` file contains debugging info (assembly's debug symbols) providing you info about code line numbers when analysing call stacks in exception/crash reports.

Files used by Visual Studio so they should not be deployed:

```
MyApp.vshost.exe
MyApp.vshost.exe.config
MyApp.vshost.exe.manifest
```

`Release` directory can also contain DLLs (build outputs from other projects or 3rd party libraries) referenced by the main executable and they shall also be included in the deployment.

Deploying a wpf application by giving the release folder of Visual Studio Solution

Solution

Problem