Selling and Deployment of an application in Visual Studio

[fermio91]

Goodmorning,

I had made an application in visual basic using visual studio 2010 express edition.
I would like to know how to make my application ready to be sold (licenses etc...) and how to insert it in some distribution channel (as microsoft store or other).

I would also say that I've no experience in applications deployment, so what I'm asking is an exhaustive answer, do not take anything for granted, please

thank you very much to all those who will reply, in the hope that they're replies will be useful also to the others ;-)



(sorry for my english)

[dilettante]

VS Express Editions only include the tools supporting ClickOnce deployment. This is a low-end, simplified deployment technique used primarily for hobby or "throwaway" projects consisting of a single simple program that can work with per-user restrictions. It isn't really suited for broad deployment.

You would need to move up to a VS "Standard" Edition or better - or else acquire a 3rd party packaging tool. I think in VS 2010 the Standard Edition is gone, so you'd need Professional at a minimum.

Deployment is a specialty topic in its own right though. Learning to do it correctly can be as much effort to learn as writing programs. Simple applications only require a subset of knowledge but you still need to know how the registry, the GAC, and the filesystem are used.

In modern Windows versions you also need to be aware of the enforcement of many Windows Guidelines by UAC. The XP appcompat world of letting users all be admins and treating the OS as Windows 95 is gone. You'll need to learn about designing for Standard User operations. This change began back in 2006, see: Designing UAC Applications for Windows Vista for one set of information on this topic.