How to deploy DevExpress to server?

Question

Hello I am needing to deploy a project using DevExpress controls to an IIS 6.0 server. The project loads fine and until I add in the DevExpress controls. When trying to load the site I get the error

Could not load file or assembly 'DevExpress.Web.v9.3, Version=9.3.4.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b88d1754d700e49a' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified

What am I doing wrong? I've tried installing the controls on the server and also just copying all of the assembly dlls to the bin/ folder of the application but I can not get this error to go away. How do I get it to work?

Answer 1

I ended up going into Visual Studio and then selecting all of the DevExpress references and setting "copy local" to true.

Answer 2

There is no official tool to do a thin install on a server, however a community member wrote a very useful tool.

Answer 3

The specific error means that it is looking for version 9.3 of DevExpress.Web assembly.

For server deployment, you only need the runtime dlls. A list of the necessary dlls are in the help file under the deployment topic:

'deployment' results from search.DevExpress.com

Brendon Muck's free 'DX Server Installer' tool is also very handy (as mentioned by @JHappoldt)

One last note, please be aware that you do not need to copy the design time dlls to your web server. These files are only meant to be used in Visual Studio. Also, it against the [EULA] to distribute these. One simple way to figure out the design time dlls is that they usually end with '.Design'

For example: 'DevExpress.XtraReports.v9.3.Design' (This should not be deployed)