How to bind/merge an exe into my program?

Question

I'm using System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("my.exe"); to call an exe

Now that I can call my .exe, I want to bind/merge it into my c# application so that when I build my application, I can get the exe built inside the projectName\Debug\builtProgram.exe or any other way to finally get a single exe file with my desired exe file inside it.

For example, consider I create a program A and I want it to encase it inside another program B which contains only one button 'Launch Program A'. And let's say program B is portable - with a single exe file. Question is - How to create program B?

are you talking about ilmerge? http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=22914587-b4ad-4eae-87cf-b14ae6a939b0&displaylang=en — kenny, Apr 17 '11 at 17:18
If it's always going to be on a non-FAT, only local drive. you could use NTFS's alternate streams http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897440\ — kenny, Apr 17 '11 at 19:42

R. Martinho Fernandes · Answer 1 · 2011-04-17T17:19:57.523

4

You can include the .exe as an embedded resource in your .NET assembly, and then dump it to disk to a temporary file on startup:

var thisAssembly = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
var executableFileName = Path.GetTempFileName();
using(resourceStream = thisAssembly.GetManifestResourceStream("name.of.resource.exe"))
using(fileStream = File.Create(executableFileName))
{
     resourceStream.CopyTo(fileStream);
}

Then you call it just like you would normally.

Process.Start(executableFileName);

edited Apr 17 '11 at 17:19

answered Apr 17 '11 at 17:13

R. Martinho Fernandes

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@Ravi: Updated the answer to include an example. – R. Martinho Fernandes Apr 17 '11 at 17:20
1

if .NET pre-4.0 CopyTo is not available, but see [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/230128/best-way-to-copy-between-two-stream-instances-c) – sehe Apr 17 '11 at 18:26

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 26 '18 at 14:25

Since it's hard for me to extract embedded resource.
Here's my answer:

        public static void getbytez(string file, string outp)
    {
        byte[] buffer = File.ReadAllBytes(file);
        string base64Encoded = Convert.ToBase64String(buffer);
        File.WriteAllText(outp+ ".txt", base64Encoded);
        //copy the base64encoded text.
        //Code by CursedGmod. credit me please :D
    }
    public static void extract2idk(string txtfile, string outp, string exten)
    {
        byte[] gu = Convert.FromBase64String(txtfile);
        // use it like this: byte[] gu = Convert.FromBase64String(your base64 converted text that you copied from the txt file);
        // or use File.ReadAllText if you're making a stub builder.
        File.WriteAllBytes(outp + exten, gu);
        Process.Start(Environment.ExpandEnvironmentVariables("%TEMP%") + Path.GetFileName(txtfile));
    }

How to bind/merge an exe into my program?

2 Answers2

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