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Learn how to build a project so it can be deployed, distributed, and/or run.
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Up until now,
0:01
we've been executing the code from
within the IDE using the debugger.
0:01
Eventually, you want to build your
application and publish it somewhere,
0:06
distribute it, or in the very least,
run it without using Visual Studio.
0:09
When I click the Start button here,
0:14
Visual Studio will first build
the solution before running the program.
0:16
When it builds the solution,
all of the files needed to run the program
0:20
are copied into a special folder inside
the project directory called bin.
0:24
Bin is short for binary, so you might
hear people call this the bin directory.
0:29
The point is, this is where you
go to find your application.
0:33
You can run it from the bin directory,
move it to another directory, or even
0:37
another computer so long as that computer
has the same version of .NET and MONO.
0:41
By default, Visual Studio projects come
preconfigured with two types of builds,
0:46
Debug and Release.
0:51
These are called build configurations.
0:53
The Debug build configuration
does things like
0:56
include information that the debugger and
profilers need.
0:58
The Release build configuration,
among other things,
1:02
applies compile time optimizations
to make the code run faster.
1:05
You can switch between build
configurations here in this drop-down.
1:10
Switching to Release build
disables the debugger.
1:14
So, if we attempt to run the debugger
with this set to release,
1:17
we'll see this message.
1:20
We're still able to continue
running the code, but
1:22
none of the break points will be hit.
1:25
You can build the code without running the
debugger by clicking on build solution in
1:27
the build menu.
1:31
Now let's take a look at what it did.
1:35
The easiest way to get to the bin
directory is to right click on the project
1:37
in Solution Explorer and
click on Open Folder in File Explorer.
1:42
Here we see the bin directory.
1:50
In here, we find two directories.
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Each named for a build configuration.
1:54
For this c sharp console app,
1:57
both directories contain
the same types of files.
2:00
Here we see the file
with the .exe extension.
2:03
That's our executable file
which we can copy around.
2:06
These other files here
are not required for
2:10
the program to run, most of them
are only used by Visual Studio.
2:12
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