Four binaries out of Visual Studio/C# compilation.

Question

I compiled a simple program (HIR) in Visual Studio 10.0 (C#), and I got the four binaries in a Debug/Release directory.

• HIR.exe
• HIR.pdb
• HIR.vshost.exe
• HIR.vshost.exe.manifest

I guess that HIR.exe is the binary, and HIR.pdb is debugging info. However, what are HIR.vshost.exe and HIR.vshost.exe.mainfest for?

In terms of deployment, do I have to let the users install all the four files?

Answer 1

You don't need to deploy the 'vshost' files, these are just to help with the performance of debugging in Visual Studio.

Just to confirm, from MSDN

Hosting process files (.vshost.exe) are for use by Visual Studio and should not be run directly or deployed with your application

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms185331%28v=VS.100%29.aspx