EXE Binder

Question

Hi Everyone I need to make a small utility in C# which can bind two exe files to one output exe file. by executing one output exe file but exe's should run simultaneously/ 1) Is it possible to make such type of utility in C#?? 2) is any helping tutorial available which can give me some idea?? Thanks

Alan · Answer

Well unless you buy an expensive third-party linker the .NET framework needs to be installed on your machine to run any C# application. However I'm not entirely clear what you're trying to do here. If the applications are still in source code form then you can compile them into a single .exe at runtime by using the Process class to call the C# command line compiler csc.exe. The only point to note is that only one of the source code files should contain an entry-point (i.e. a Main() method). If the applications have already been compiled then it's possible to merge them into a single assembly using a Microsoft utility called ILMerge which can be freely downloaded from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=22914587-B4AD-4EAE-87CF-B14AE6A939B0&displaylang=en Although this utility would normally be run directly from the command line it should be possible to use the Process class to run it from a C# application.

Sach · Answer

Cool way but this way i can give only path of the exe and those exe's need to exist. but what i want to do is to make only one exe and delete the other two source exe's one more doubt if i create an exe using this method i would be needing framework on the system ??

Alan · Answer

It's the System.Diagnostics.Process class that you need for this: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.diagnostics.process.aspx If the two exe's don't have any special requirements or need any command line arguments then the code for output.exe could be as simple as this: using System; using System.Diagnostics; class Program { static void Main() { Process.Start(exePath1); Process.Start(exePath2); } }