How to ship a Windows Forms application to a client without .NET?

This is about the deployment of a Windows Forms application. I have created a Windows Forms application, but I'm not sure if the users have installed .NET version 4. I have put my Windows Forms application at my website and the users will download it to their desktop.

How do I automate the process of downloading and installing .NET 4 if the users have not installed it? What are the recommended ways of deploying Windows Forms applications to users?

Solution

You could try ClickOnce.

ClickOnce deployment allows you to publish Windows-based applications to a Web server or network file share for simplified installation.

You just need to define which prerequisites you want to include in bootstraper, as described here

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