Assembly Deployment Tool

Jun 25, 2024
3 minutes to read

Note

Assembly Deployment Tool supports .NET Framework applications only.

The DevExpress Assembly Deployment Tool for Visual Studio allows you to collect required redistributable DevExpress (and custom) assemblies to deploy your application. The Assembly Deployment Tool ships as part of the DevExpress Unified Component Installer and is accessible through the main menu in the Visual Studio IDE ( Tools > DevExpress Assembly Deployment Tool ):

In the DevExpress Assembly Deployment Tool dialog, specify the path to the folder where you want to deploy the project(s), select the project(s), and click Analyze :

After that, you will see a list of DevExpress assemblies required for application distribution:

The assemblies list is organized as follows:

Output files for the selected projects are at the top of the list: executable files (.exe) for WinForms and WPF projects or assembly files (.dll) for ASP.NET web applications.
After output files, there is a list of DevExpress assemblies directly referenced by the selected projects. These include additional required assemblies such as ASP.NET or WPF Themes, and/or the DevExpress Printing assembly that may not be directly referenced by the selected projects. Note that design-time assemblies (*.Design.dll) are not included in the list even if they are directly referenced, as they are not required for distribution, and it is strictly prohibited to deploy such assemblies according to the DevExpress EULA.
At the bottom of the list there are additional items for customizing the overall assembly list.

Note

The Assembly Deployment Tool does not collect Satellite Resource Assemblies used for localization. You should collect and deploy such libraries manually.

As an additional option, you can add or remove the redistributable assemblies from the list by choosing corresponding DevExpress products. The products are listed in the By Products tab for the specific DevExpress product version. A list of required assemblies will be added once you check a specific product. This feature is useful when your projects do not reference DevExpress assemblies explicitly. It may load them implicitly using Reflection, for example.

Once you have selected the required assemblies and specified the deployment folder, click the Deploy button.

The Tool will copy all selected assemblies into the specified destination folder. Note that if the destination folder does not exist, you will be prompted to create one. If the destination folder is not empty and contains any of the selected assemblies, you will be asked to rewrite the files in the destination folder.