Deploy to My Computer

Fri, January 7, 2005, 11:28 AM under MobileAndEmbedded
Regular readers will recall the deployment feature for Smart Device projects that was cut after Beta 1. It has now been confirmed that the "Deploy to My Computer" feature will not be supported for RTM. However, there are some steps you can follow to get it working (it just won't be supported) and it is likely that in the future there will be a powertoy to do the steps for you.

If you want more details on the feature I am talking about, and more importantly want to follow the steps to get "Deploy to My Computer" working today with the November CTP, please visit ladybug.

Below is a copy of the steps (which I can confirm work... on my setup anyway:-).

This is courtesy of Kei Amos:
Enabling deployment of managed applications to the desktop rather than a device:

This is a great productivity enhancement for application development, when you deploy often.
Note: Applications that use device-specific apps will not run properly on the desktop, and controls will render as desktop controls.

INSTRUCTIONS
1. In Visual Studio select Tools/Options, and then select Device Tools/Devices from the tree.
2. In the top combo box, select the platform that you want to add desktop deployment to. You’ll need to do this for each platform you want to use.
3. Select one of the devices, (it doesn’t matter which one) and click the Save As… button. Save as “My Computer”. If you’ve already done this for a platform, you’ll need to save subsequent devices with slightly different names (like “My Computer2”)
4. Close VS and open your %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\CoreCon\1.0\conman_ds_platform.xsl file in a text editor.
5. Find the <DEVICE …> element corresponding to the device you created and add the node (i.e. search for “My Computer” to find the correct node.)
<PROPERTY ID="IsDesktopDevice" Name="IsDesktopDevice">true</PROPERTY>
Place it right after the first <PROPERTYCONTAINER> tag.
6. Save conman_ds_platform.xsl and restart VS.

Now when you deploy, you can select “My Computer” from the deploy dialog.


UPDATE: For Beta 2, also see this thread