deployment help

[Drstein99]

Please help. My development PC is windows XP, the pc I'm developing applications for is windows 98 (I sure hope this

doesnt matter). The 98 pc has .net framework installed.

 

I think I went through the screen to deploy the package, included the .exe in the app folder, but I'm getting exception faults when the program loads on the 98 pc.

 

I'm thinking maybe it has something to do with the dependencies. Am I supposed to manually add the .dll files or does it figure it by itself?

[PlausiblyDamp]

What are the exceptions you are getting?

[Drstein99]

common language runtime debugging services:

 

application has generated an exception that could not be handled.

 

process id=0xfffa2d5b (-381605), thread id =0xfffb18d3 (-321325)

 

click ok to terminate the application

click cancel to debug the application

[Drstein99]

ok i did some MAJOR debugging and narrowed it down to this part of my code (which executes a crystal report "efficiency"), and dseff is a datatable:

 

Dim rpt As New EFFICIENCY

rpt.SetDataSource(dsEff)

rpt.PrintToPrinter(1, False, 0, 0)

[PlausiblyDamp]

When you create your setup package - did you use the wizard or do it manually?

Does the setup package deploy the required dependencies to the target pc? Just out of interest what other dependencies does it have apart from the .Net framework?

[Drstein99]

I wonder if it has anything to do with crystal reports and loading some software on that machine?

[Drstein99]

I remember doing the wizzard. but I dont remember it asking me to include dependencies

[PlausiblyDamp]

If it uses crystal you will need to make sure you deploy the crystal support files. Have a search in these forums I'm sure this has been discussed recently. If not post back here and I'll see what I can dig up.

[Drstein99]

I'm sure you probably right. Althought I would think it should be part of the deployment process if it's included with the project.

[Drstein99]

Ok. I found the section in vs help that pertains to "deploying an application with crystal reports".

 

I included the merge modules.

I included the registration key code, as the instructions explain.

 

Uninstalled from target pc prior software

re/build new install program

Installed new software

 

same "common language runtime debugging services" fault

 

How do I go about debugging this now?

[Drstein99]

Ok to all that have this same problem:

 

After 2 days of endless research, I found a hotfix on Crystal's website. After installing the product update, the "README" explains if it doesnt correct the issue, to call Crystal phone support.

 

I called phone support, after 1 hour phone time fixed the issue (no charge for phone support)

[divil]

Just to add to this...

 

.NET is sometimes not very helpful about reporting missing dependancies, as you can see from the exception information Drstein99 posted. This seems to be even less helpful on Windows 98 machines, where it isn't possible to install Visual Studio to debug the software.

 

One option is to copy across some of the files from the .NET SDK, including cordbg.exe. This useful program is a fully-featured debugger which operates via a command line, and running your application through it will reveal a great deal more than the unhelpful exception dialog, and show you the whole exception.

 

If you copy your source code to the target machine it'll even give you a stack trace and show you just where the exception occured.

[Drstein99]

how does the cordbg.exe know the path to the source code?

Where do I begin to read the proper procedures for this nice process you describe?

 

I got my crystal program to work, without flaw. In the future month I will be releaseing a complex application I'm sure that I will need to know this for.

[divil]

If your debug symbols (pdb) are included with your assembly, then a debugger knows where to find the source code and how to map source code lines to IL instructions. There's probably documentation for cordbg in the SDK, if not, the help function within the software isn't too bad.

[Drstein99]

Thanks for the advice. I'm gonna hold onto this thread, and give it a whirl next install I have to do. Hopefully it won't be as painstaking.