[This documentation is for preview only, and is subject to change in later releases. Blank topics are included as placeholders.]
Deployment is the process by which you distribute a finished application or component to be installed on other computers.
Before you can deploy a solution, you need to tell Visual Studio what to deploy, where to deploy it, and how to deploy it. You do this by adding one or more deployment projects to your solution; each deployment project specifies instructions for installing files and components on a target computer.
For distributed applications, you usually create a separate deployment project for each tier in your application. For example, an application with three tiers would require three deployment projects, one each for the data, business logic, and client tiers.
In addition, you should create a separate deployment project to create a merge module for any component in your solution that may potentially be shared between multiple solutions.
Describes the File System Editor, which allows you to add project outputs, files, and other items to a deployment project and specify where they will be installed on the target computer.
Describes the User Interface Editor, which can be used to specify and set properties for predefined dialog boxes that are displayed during installation on the target computer.
Describes the Custom Actions Editor, which allows you to specify additional actions to be performed on the target computer at the end of an installation.
Discusses how you can determine the dependencies of a native, or unmanaged, Visual C++ application and redistribute all of the files needed to support the application on the target system.
