Deployment of a Windows Forms Application

When a .NET Windows Forms project is open in the Project painter, you can select Design > Deploy Project or the Deploy icon on the PainterBar to deploy the project.

When all painters are closed, including the Project painter, you can right-click a .NET Windows Forms target or project in the System Tree and select Deploy from its pop-up menu. If the target has more than one project, specify which of them to deploy when you select Deploy from the target’s context menu on the Deploy tab page in the target’s Properties dialog box.

The Output window displays the progress of the deployment. PowerBuilder compiles PBLs into PBD files when they contain DataWindow, Query, or Pipeline objects that are referenced in the application. The application and its supporting files are deployed to the location specified in the Output Path field on the General page.

Among the files deployed is a file with the name appname.exe.config, where appname is the name of your application. This file is a .NET configuration file that defines application settings. For a sample configuration file that includes database configuration settings for an ADO.NET connection, see Connecting to Your Database > Using the ADO.NET Interface. The sample shows how to configure tracing in the appname.exe.config file, as shown in Runtime Errors.

If there are any unsupported properties, functions, or events that are used in the application that are not supported in PowerBuilder .NET Windows Forms applications, they display on the Unsupported Features tab page in the Output view. For more information, see Unsupported Features in Windows Forms Projects.

If the application uses features that might cause it to run incorrectly, they display on the Warnings tab page in the Output view. For a list of restrictions, most of which apply to both Windows and Web Forms applications, see Best Practices for .NET Projects.