February 16, 2003 .net

No touch deployment

From David Taylor: I just read Chris Sell's "Distributed .config Files with Smart Clients" article: http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2003/01/27/ztd.html Here is another problem I just came across. I often use System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("http://www.sellsbrothers.com") to launch a website (or mailto, etc). However when deploying a simple URL shortcut to the actual application (on a web server), the assembly gets hosted by IEEXEC.exe. The problem is that the Process.Start method then returns a file not found error! I did get it working by directly invoking Internet Explorer, but I needed to know it's directory from the registry because it is not always in the path (and there were some other strange behaviors). So I have ended up using a minimalist setup.msi file that leaves a 5-10 line Loader.exe program on the users computer which in turn loads the assembly from the web server. That way it is *not* hosted in IEEXEC and Process.Start works as expected.