If you plan to deliver your plug-in to other users, it is crucial that you provide an easy and reliable way to install your product.
No special registration is required by PostSharp. For this reason, you can perfectly opt for an XCOPY deployment. However, in order for your plug-in to easily found (especially if you offer automatic detection based on custom attributes), it is necessary to install the plug-in configuration files under one of the two standard directories (see previous section).
You have basically two possibilities:
- either you deliver a zip file with installation instructions telling the user where to unzip the archive,
- either you author a Microsoft Installer package.
In the last situation, you may want to:
- look for the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\postsharp.org\PostSharp 1.0\Locationregistry key, which will instruct you whether and where PostSharp is installed,
- eventually look for the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\postsharp.org\PostSharp 1.0\Versionregistry key to know the precise installed version,
- add a precondition to the package so that your plug-in will not install if the proper minimal version of PostSharp is not present.