Deploying WPF Application with 3rd Party DLLs

Question

I've been extremely frustrated trying to deploy a C#/WPF application I've created that has some references to 3rd party DLLs. I created a folder in the project, called lib, where I placed all of these DLLs. In VS2012, I added the references by browsing to that folder, and selecting all the DLLs. Copy Local is set to true for all. Everything is fine when I build and run, but when I choose publish, and create a OneClick Installer, things aren't so smooth. During the publish wizard, I set it to install from disk, and set it to never check for updates. I take that folder, place it on a flash drive, plug it into another PC, run the setup, and it throws an Exception. I believe I know what is happening, but I cannot figure out how to package this in order to deploy it correctly.

One of my DLLs is a C# wrapper to a DLL that is designed for a C++ project. We'll say, Application requires DLL1 and DLL1 requires DLL2. DLL2 cannot be added as a reference in the project because is not a .NET DLL. DLL1 requires DLL2 to be in the same folder in order to pick it up. I'm using CefSharp which wraps the Chromium Embedded Framework.

I've tried placing the required DLLs for CefSharp.dll in the publish/Application Files directory, but it did not work. I noticed that all of the DLLs that are there from VS2012 have a .deploy extension on them, I even went and added that extension on to see if it was scanning for that to pick up, but it did not work either. This is my first time doing development and deployment for a Windows application and all of the tutorials on MSDN or blog posts I've read do not seem to cover this case, and I do not see any other options in the deployment manager to handle these types of cases.

If it helps, the Exception Code that is thrown is: CLR20r3

When I catch and display Exception, all of the info I am provided basically says CefSharp.dll or one of it's dependencies cannot be loaded. Which I've gotten before when DLL2 was not in the same folder as DLL1.

Can anyone provide help on how to deploy from VS2012 with a situation like this?

Thanks in advance!

Edit: Info Update

I was attempting to push a debug build version to a test machine without Visual Studio installed. When building for CefSharp or any other C++ Runtime DLL, it will look for all of the Debug versions of the DLL which are usually the same name, but with the letter 'd' added to the end. As mentioned below, the Debug version of the C++ Runtime is not redistributable. Not that you can't manually add those DLLs to your project and set them as Copy Always, but that's kind of a hack job. I started a new project from scratch, added all Release versions of the DLLs, built, and everything was fine.

Tresa

@EricScherrer Haven't had time to check it out yet. It will be a few hours until I get back to that project. I'll update with info whatever I find out. Thanks, btw. – Tresa

Answer 1

I've been tearing my hair out trying to fix this very problem this morning and eventually found the solution. It seems you already know which DLLs etc. you need for CefSharp to work but I thought I would run through this in case anyone else is having the same problem. I have a C# WPF application and I'm using CefSharp as the web view. I'm using CefSharp v1 because I need the JavaScript -> C# bridge they provide which isn't yet implemented in v3. Here are the rough steps I went through in setting up the project (I'm using VS2013 but this will probably work in VS2012).

Installing CefSharp

• Install CefSharp.Wpf through NuGet (I'm using v1.25.7)
• That should put the relevant files in $(SolutionDir)packages\CefSharp.Wpf.1.25.7\cef

Configuring Build

• To get the CefSharp DLLs to copy to our build folders, right-click on your project, select Properties -> Build Events and enter the following in the "Post-build event command line":

  xcopy "$(SolutionDir)packages\CefSharp.Wpf.1.25.7\cef*" "$(TargetDir)" /s /y /i

• That should now copy all of the required DLLs from the cef folder as well as the devtools_resources.pak file and the locales folder plus its contents. I require them in my project as I need the chromium dev tools.

• Double-check your project references contain CefSharp and CefSharp.Wpf. That should have been taken care of by NuGet.

Taking care of Visual C++ 2012 Runtime Files

• I didn't want the user to have to download the whole Visual C++ 2012 Runtime Files as part of the deployment so through Visual Studio, add the folder Lib\Microsoft.VC110.CRT and add the 3 DLLs (msvcp110.dll, msvcr110.dll, vccorlib110.dll) from the following folder on your machine to the folder you just created in your project:

  C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\VC\redist\x86\Microsoft.VC110.CRT

• Select the 3 DLL files in Visual Studio, right-click -> properties. Make sure Build Action is set to "None" and Copy to Output Directory is set to "Do not copy". Now you need to add another post-build event to make sure these are copied properly (i.e. copied to the root so they sit alongside the CEF dlls and your project exe) for debug.

• Right-click on your project, select Properties -> Build Events and enter the following in the "Post-build event command line" just after your other xcopy command for CEF:

  xcopy "$(ProjectDir)Lib\Microsoft.VC110.CRT*.*" "$(TargetDir)" /s /y /i

At this point, everything should be building. To publish the app with ClickOnce, I need it to push all of the CEF DLLs out as well as ensuring the files/folders required for chromium dev tools are present. If you don't need the dev tools or all of the DLLs then you can tweak this accordingly.

Ensuring CEF and C++ runtime files are deployed with ClickOnce

• Right click your project in Visual Studio and select "unload project".

• Right click and select to edit the csproj file.

• Before the closing </Project> tag add this

  <ItemGroup>
     <Content Include="$(SolutionDir)packages\CefSharp.Wpf.1.25.7\cef\**\*">
       <Link>%(RecursiveDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)</Link>
       <Visible>false</Visible>
    </Content>
  </ItemGroup>
  
  <ItemGroup>
     <Content Include="$(ProjectDir)Lib\Microsoft.VC110.CRT\**\*">
        <Link>%(RecursiveDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)</Link>
        <Visible>false</Visible>
    </Content>
  </ItemGroup>
  

• That will add everything from the cef folder into the project and make sure the C++ binaries are copied to the root of the project on deployment. In my case for CEF, I'm using the \**\* syntax at the end of the Include and %(RecursiveDir) to ensure all of the files are copied as well as the locales folder with its contents and structure preserved. Having set <Visible>false</Visible> you won't see the items in the solution explorer.

Relax

Now if you publish your app, it should copy over all of the required files and folders.

Recognizance

Thanks for taking the time to follow up with a good step through on packaging up a project with CefSharp :) – Tresa

Excellent answer @Barrie! I haven't tried it out myself - yet - but it looks really good. @Tresa I'd be more than happy if you mark this as your correct answer instead of mine (if that's possible here on SO). – Lite

One minor (future) note: With the CefSharp3 NuGet the xcopy step shouldn't be required - but you already mention that your description target 1.25.7 where it is required. So just a heads-up! – Lite

Two notes, since this helped massively (but didn't get me all the way there). Firstly, recursively copying the CefSharp directory doesn't work very well, because the actual DLLs are in the x86 folder (and those assemblies don't get loaded by default, because they aren't in the root dir). You can fix this by breaking the package reference for Cef into an x86 one (with or without recursivedir), a locales one (with locales\%(Filename)%(Extension)) and a root one (without $(RecursiveDir)). Secondly, I'm using VS2010 so the VC++ libs ended up in SysWOW32. Found them eventually. – Enedina

Oh man, this saved my bacon today. Kept smashing my head into the wall on this one. In particular, the native C++ runtime files were what was missing. Since it was the native CefSharp DLLs needing the runtime libraries, ClickOnce didn't auto-detect them as a pre-requisite. Manually adding the DLL files as part of the build fixed this. – Radiosensitive

Answer 2

You could try this which solved a similar issue for me:

Add the DLL's that are not .NET libraries to the solution as files:

Right click project > Add > Existing Item

Then set their build action to Content and "Copy to output directory" to "Copy Always".

That way the libraries will be included in the output directory.

Woke

Unfortunately, this did not work. Throws same exception during same part of install... – Tresa

Answer 3

Since you already tried manually adding the suspect dll and it still does not work, the next thing I would do is run fusion and see what it really is complaining about, in other words what exactly is the dependency that can not be loaded. Here is a good tutorial on how to hunt down these types of errors:

Back to Basics: Using Fusion Log Viewer to Debug Obscure Loader Errors

Fernanda

Thanks for the info. I've been squishing little bugs in the software for the past two days, but tomorrow is when I'll be trying to push the install so I'll update based on Fusion accordingly. Thanks again! – Tresa

Fusion Log didn't display anything useful. I did load it into a Dependency Walker and found out that it was looking for msvcp110d.dll which is the debug version of the C++ Runtime. Still looking into getting that into the project somehow... – Tresa

Thanks, I never heard of dependency walker. Having a dependency on a debug version sounds fishy to me. – Fernanda

Answer 4

Maybe you can work it out from the https://github.com/Code52/DownmarkerWPF sources?

They have at least a working ClickOnce installer for their app embedding CefSharp. I know because that's the way it got installed on my machine!

update just saw in comments that it's the VC Redist that you say you are missing then Distributing the Visual C++ Runtime Libraries (MSVCRT) seems relevant.

Also I seem to remember something vaguely about that for "VCRedist reasons" you are not supposed to distribute debug versions of your application. Can't you just switch from a Debug to a Release version? With this I think you can either bundle the needed VCRedist files as suggested in the CefSharp FAQ or add VCRedist as a prerequisite in your installer. DownmarkerWPF does it with their WIX installer setup which you can find on a branch in their GitHub repo. Something similar is AFAIK possible with the VStudio bundled installer if that's what you use.

Lite

Thanks for the suggestion! I'll post back with solutions once I get this deployed... – Tresa

Answer 5

Thanks to Barrie's answer to this, it helped me greatly. I'm using his answer below, but updating it to work for the latest CEF using Visual Studio 2015.

NOTE: I am only building/targeting the x86 platform. You may need to change or include x64 in the copy commands below to suit your needs.

Installing CefSharp

• Install CefSharp.Wpf through NuGet (I'm using v51.0.0)

  NuGet Library After Install

• That should put the relevant files in

  $(SolutionDir)packages\CefSharp.Wpf.51.0.0\CefSharp (CefSharp.Wpf) $(SolutionDir)packages\CefSharp.Common.51.0.0\CefSharp (CefSharp.Common) $(SolutionDir)packages\cef.redist.x86.3.2704.1432\CEF (Cef x86 redist) $(SolutionDir)packages\cef.redist.x64.3.2704.1432\CEF (Cef x64 redist)

Configuring Build

• To get the CefSharp DLLs to copy to our build folders... I don't believe this is necessary anymore with the later versions of CefSharp. I found that I didn't need any of the "Post-build event command-line" xcopy stuff to get Click-Once to ship it out. (And yes, DevTools works too!)

Taking care of Visual C++ 2012 Runtime Files

• (Switched to VCR 2013) I didn't want the user to have to download the whole Visual C++ 2013 Runtime Files as part of the deployment, so through Visual Studio, add the folder lib\Microsoft.VC120.CRT and add the 3 DLLs (msvcp110.dll, msvcr110.dll, vccorlib110.dll) from the following folder on your machine to the folder you just created in your project:

  C:\Windows\SysWOW64

  (Didn't see them in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\redist)

At this point, everything should be building. To publish the app with ClickOnce, we need it to push all of the CEF DLLs. You can tweak this accordingly...

Ensuring CEF and C++ runtime files are deployed with ClickOnce

• Right click your project in Visual Studio and select "unload project".
• Right click and select to edit the csproj file.

• Before the closing tag add the following:

  <!--  BEGIN: CUSTOM ITEM GROUP INCLUDES INTO THE PROJECT (SO CLICK-ONCE PUBLISHES THEM) -->
  <ItemGroup>
          <Content Include="$(SolutionDir)packages\cef.redist.x86.3.2704.1432\CEF\**\*" Exclude="$(SolutionDir)packages\cef.redist.x86.3.2704.1432\CEF\x86\**\*;$(SolutionDir)packages\cef.redist.x86.3.2704.1432\CEF\locales\**\*.pak">
                  <Link>%(RecursiveDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)</Link>
                  <Visible>false</Visible>
          </Content>
  </ItemGroup>
  <ItemGroup>
          <Content Include="$(SolutionDir)packages\cef.redist.x86.3.2704.1432\CEF\**\en-GB.*;$(SolutionDir)packages\cef.redist.x86.3.2704.1432\CEF\**\en-US.*">
                  <Link>%(RecursiveDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)</Link>
                  <Visible>false</Visible>
          </Content>
  </ItemGroup>
  <ItemGroup>
          <Content Include="$(SolutionDir)packages\cef.redist.x86.3.2704.1432\CEF\x86\**\*">
          <Link>%(RecursiveDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)</Link>
          <Visible>false</Visible>
          </Content>
  </ItemGroup>
  <ItemGroup>
          <Content Include="$(SolutionDir)packages\CefSharp.Common.51.0.0\CefSharp\x86\**\CefSharp.BrowserSubprocess.*">
                  <Link>%(RecursiveDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)</Link>
                  <Visible>false</Visible>
          </Content>
  </ItemGroup>
  <ItemGroup>
          <Content Include="$(ProjectDir)lib\Microsoft.VC120.CRT\**\*">
                  <Link>%(Filename)%(Extension)</Link>
                  <Visible>false</Visible>
          </Content>
  </ItemGroup>
  <!--  END: CUSTOM ITEM GROUP INCLUDES INTO THE PROJECT (SO CLICK-ONCE PUBLISHES THEM) -->
  

• That will add everything from the cef folder into the project and make sure the C++ binaries are copied to the root of the project on deployment. Having set false you won't see the items in the solution explorer.

• REMEMBER: I am only building/targeting the x86 platform. You may need to change or include x64 in the copy commands below to suit your needs.

Publish

Now if you publish your app, it should copy over all of the required files and folders.

---

(EXTRA INFO) Supporting Older Operating Systems Info Below

If you need to use CefSharp for older machines (XP & Vista), simply install CefSharp.Wpf through NuGet using the older v47.0.0 version and change your .NET targeting to .NET 4.0 Client Profile.

Chromium ended support for XP and Vista in April 2016, CefSharp version 47 (or there abouts) still had support for it.

Another note on a problem and fix for XP:

There is a Chromium issue for XP deployments. Below is the article describing the fix followed by steps to deploy fix for JBCB.

Here's the link to the article: https://bitbucket.org/chromiumembedded/cef/issues/1787

...in it you'll see a reference to download a "dbghelp.dll". Download and extract.

---

YOU CAN TAKE A POST-INSTALL APPROACH LIKE BELOW OR CHOOSE TO INCLUDE THE DLL ALONG WITH YOUR OTHER PUBLISHED FILES. I'M CHOOSING NOT TO DEPLOY THE EXTRA DLL AND ONLY DEPLOY ON XP MACHINES (WE ONLY HAVE FEW) MANUALLY.

---

Take these steps to fix deployment on an XP machine:

1. Install the CefSharp Browser on the XP machine (via Click-Once)
2. Copy the "dbghelp.dll"
3. Paste it in the local install directory on the XP machine (per the instructions in previous link: along side the "libcef.dll" file).

NOTE: For click-once installs, will be in a sub-folder under this location:

C:\Documents and Settings\<UserName>\Local Settings\Apps\2.0\<auto-gen ostificated ID>

Yardarm

Answer 6

Read very carefully the official list of CefSharp dependencies - there are a lot of them! You need to get them all into the ClickOnce bin folder somehow.

Here is how I solved it:

• Before deploying, install the latest version of Visual C++ Redistributable. on each PC you are deploying to (using group policy or just manually).
• Start with a blank test project.
• Add project references to CefSharp, CefSharp.Core, etc.
• Add each dependency into a single folder in the project directory to keep them organised (Files\CefSharp\).
• Ensure all files are configured with Build Action: Content, and Copy to Output Dir: Copy always.
• Make a function Initalise_CefSharpFiles() to copy the files/folders into the bin root folder (where CefSharp looks for them). For example, copy from: Bin\Files\CefSharp\* to: Bin\*.
• And finally at run time, call Initalise_CefSharpFiles() once after the app loads, and before initialising CefSharp's settings.

Gastroenteritis