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I created a MFC VC++ graphics program. I would like to make this program downloadable to anyone interested in trying from my website. How do I prepare such a file? and make it available from my site?
By the way, I used VS2019 community version.... Is it possible to create a downloadable file using this free VS2019?
Depending on the linking options, such as /MD, user may need to install the same version of your C++ redistributable.
It depends what your program needs on others machines and what you want the end-user's experience to be.
If your program is a stand-alone EXE (statically linked), and needs nothing else, you could just zip it and instruct people to download the zip, unzip it somewhere and run it.
If your needs are more complicated and require a setup program to do other things, such as install any dependencies, set registry keys, create start menu links, etc, then have a look at the Microsoft Visual Studio Installer Projects or a 3rd party installer such as Inno setup.
Thank you very much for the info. My CAD program (using free VS2019 community) is a DLL-based program using MFC and OpenGL. I do have 10 or so DLLs to run my CAD program. I just cleanly built a x64 / release version of my program.
I just did download and install VS Installer. Now, how do I go about creating a project?
I suggest that you do some homework to get familiar with concepts before attempting to create an installer project. Obtaining an understanding of deployment for a windows desktop application written in C++ with MFC will be helpful.
So I suggest you start reading here - deploying-native-desktop-applications-visual-cpp and also deployment-in-visual-cpp.
Unfortunately, the documentation for the Visual Studio Installer Projects extension is quite old and was written for much older versions. However, in most cases, the concepts covered in the documentation remain applicable. You can find the documentation here - Visual Studio Installer Deployment. You may also find it helpful to create a simple windows desktop application that does not depend on MFC and OpenGL to use for experimentation to get familiar with how installer projects are created.
Thank you for all the good links. Very helpful.
I did this some years back once and I could not remember all the details of how to create a msi file.
I looked at my old document and I was able to create a downloadable file for my CAD system just now. I used VS Installer, not ClickOnce.
I put it on my web --- www.honda-e.com/CAD-download.htm
I tried it and it worked for me. I do not know if someone without VS installed in their PC can successfully run this program. I have to test using some else's PC....
An easy way to test your installation is to install it on a clean image of an OS into a virtual machine under Hyper-V or other virtualisation software such as virtual box.