Is installer necessary?

[emeraldtea]

We are writing an application. Users will be several hundreds of people. The application is not that big. We only need to distribute an executable and several other files. Can we just write some scripts so that when users log in, these files will be xcopied to their hard drives, instead of writing a installer program for it?
Which is better?

 

[chiph]

Depends on what type of assemblies you've written.

Windows Services, COM+ components (Enterprise Services), etc. need to be installed, not just copied. You *can* do this via command-line tools (InstallUtil.EXE is distributed with the framework), but sometimes it's easier to use something like the Wise install tool because they generate logs that you can view remotely to see if your users had any problems with their installation.

Chip H.

 

[Dinobrago]

Also, it depends on the heterogeneity of the user machines. If you have a wide mix of OS & service packs, use an installer because it will take some work to install upgrades & updates to ensure that your app & .NET will run on all the different flavors.

Of course, you could just exclude certain machine configurations. But if that is not an option, use the installer.
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dino