I'm writing a windows form application in VS2008 using VB. I have a text script file needs to be deployed together with my application. How do I reference this file when coding and how to deploy it using windows installer? A similar question, how do I reference the installation folder of my application?

Sanping

just pack it up in the same folder where ur application is going to get deploy... and inside your application use TextReader to read the text file and implement what ever u need, if u want, u can even delete the file after u finish the process

here is he code to use TextReader
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.textreader.aspx

hope this helps... let me know if u have any more queries

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Narayanan Dayalan - Zeetaa Business Solutions ------- Please "Mark As Answer", if my answer works well with ur Query

Thanks for your reply. I'm new to VS. It appears I have made my question clear. For example, I have a script file "c:\App1\myBatch.bat", and in my application I need to do

Dim sh = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

Dim ReturnCode = sh.Run("c:\App1\myBatch.bat" , 4, True)

If ReturnCode= 0 Then

do something...

End If

Currently I add the file "c:\App1\myBatch.bat" to my setup project using windows installer so the file will be installed somewhere like "C:/Programma Files/...", depending on the user's selection. You know the sh.Run line will not run on the user's machine. What's the solution?

Sanping

never worry about where the bat file is going to get placed, if the text bat file is been set to install in same folder where the application going to get installed...

if the text file is been placed in the same folder where the application is installed you can open the file by just

Dim ReturnCode = sh.Run("myBatch.bat" , 4, True)

hope this helps...

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Narayanan Dayalan - Zeetaa Business Solutions ------- Please "Mark As Answer", if my answer works well with ur Query

Rather than using a setup project to delploy the file, add the text file to the main project through the solution explorer (right click the project and add an existing file). Then select the file and change its Copy to Ouput Directoryto Copy Always in the property grid. This will ensure that the text file is located in the same directory as the application. Then you can just use the filename without a path as Narayanan has suggested.

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Reed Kimble - "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all"

Thanks Narayanan and Reed, your suggestion works. However, I can't figure out the logic behind the method. The script file including the path is specified in a string variable, how does the system know where the file is? Is it because the application starts from the application folder so the system can "see" all the file under current folder? What if the current folder changes in runtime? If my guess is right, I think I need to store the current folder when the application starts and use it later. Am I right?

Sanping

if u specify a full path of script file and if it is not there then it will create a problem, but in our case we are just storing the script file in the same folder where the application is going to get installed, so never worry about the folders change and all, because your application is going to read the script from ur current application folder..

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Narayanan Dayalan - Zeetaa Business Solutions ------- Please "Mark As Answer", if my answer works well with ur Query