Visual Studio 2005 Crystal Reports deployment

Well, we have a visual studio 2005 windows application with crystal report and wish to deploy to customer machine. There are some basic files that needed to deploy to a normal xp home machine:

• .NET Framework 2.0 - download from microsoft site
• Project files - compile from Visual Studio 2005
• Crystal reports merge module - discuss here

Here we will discuss how to create crystal reports merge module setup for deployment purposes.

Below are the steps :

1. Generate a setup using setup wizard (either create a new project or add a new project to existing project), name it setup1.
   
   


2. Right click in Setup1, select Add-> Merge Module. and open files listed below (by default, it will go to the correct directory which is C:\Program Files\Common Files\Merge Modules).
   
   
   Crystal_Database_Access2003.msm
   Crystal_Database_Access2003_enu.msm
   Crystal_Managed2003.msm
   Crystal_regwiz2003.msm
   
   
   
3. now right click on Crystal_regwiz2003.msm , Click Properties. in properties window, Click on (MergeModuleProperties), in License Key property set license code of crystal report.
   
   This code can be obtained from Help menu -> About Microsoft Visual Studio, here u find a licence code for 'Crystal Reports'. copy this code and paste it in license key proparty.
   
   

4. Almost done. Now build setup by Right click on Setup1 and Click on Build

   
   
5. Copy the setup1.exe from you project output folder (normally is in Project's Debug or Release folder)

Install this exe during deployment. Done

More reference:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms225227(VS.80).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa287924(VS.71).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa288179(VS.71).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms227409(VS.80).aspx

http://resources.businessobjects.com/support/additional_downloads/runtime.asp