.NET windows application, can it be compressed into a single .exe?

Question

Hi,

Not to familiar with .net desktop applications (using vs.net 2005), is it possible to have the entire application run from a single .exe file?

Answer 1

Yes, you can use the ILMerge tool.

Answer 2

There is a third party tool called .NET Reactor that can do this for you. I have not used the tool and so am not sure how well it works.

Answer 3

You mustn't split it up into multiple assemblies (which are usually projects inside a Visual Studio solution). The .NET Framework is required anyway, there's no way - and that's the right way - to embed it.

Answer 4

Related discussion here.

Answer 5

As it has been said, you can use ILMerge.

It may be easier however, if you use the free Phoenix protector, which also protects your code.

Answer 6

I have used .NETZ .net open source executable packer to pack exe and dll files into single exe file. Here is command line example how to pack dll files into one file:

netz -s application.exe foo.dll bar.dll

Answer 7

Yes. In .NET you can have your entire application encapsulated as a single EXE file. Just make sure your solution only has one Windows Application project in it (and no other projects except for setups).

The EXE file created by your .NET project will not be a stand-alone executable file, but the only dependency it will have will be the .NET runtime (unless you add references to other DLL assemblies). If you use .NET 2.0 (which I recommend), the runtime comes preinstalled on newer PCs and is very easy and quick to set up on older machines (installer is about 23 MB).

If your app does need to reference other assemblies (like a data access DLL or a .NET class library DLL project), you could use one of the tools referenced by other posters here to combine your EXE and all referenced DLLs into a single EXE file. However, conventional practice would dictate simply deploying the EXE file along with any dependent DLLs as separate files. In .NET, deployment of dependent DLLs is pretty simple: just put them in the same folder as the EXE file on the client machine, and you're done.

It is good practice to deploy your application (whether one file or many) as a single-file installer (either a setup.EXE or setup.MSI). .NET comes with deployment project templates that can create installers for you fairly easily.

Slightly off-topic: You could use NGEN to compile your .NET application as a native EXE, but it would still be dependent upon the .NET runtime. The advantage of native compilation is that some things can be pre-compiled, but I've never seen a situation where this tiny performance increase is worth the bother.

Answer 8

Yes, you can create a single exe. Tow good articles here:

how to include all related DLLs into a single exe

and

.net runtime -- single exe

thank you.

Answer 9

You can try NBox util.

http://nbox.codeplex.com