I have an application written in VB.Net with a MySQL database that is working fine in my development environment.

I would like to create an installation package to test on other computers. The install package should include:

  1. Check for .Net 4 - if it doesn't exist then install it (I've downloaded the .net 4 full package file)
  2. Check for existence of MySQL - install the database

I have a few questions:

  1. Is there a good book or web-tutorial that can explain how to create an installation package? How about a good person to speak with - that would be good too.

  2. I have DLLs and references that are stored all over the place on my dev system in debug mode (some in the GAC, some in the Program Files Folder of the 3rd Party Controls we purchased, some in the local folder of the development app. Can someone also recommend the best way for me to move all of these to one location - say - a \lib folder? Is changing the the reference location and moving the files to the \lib folder all there is to it?

  3. I don't know if this is appropriate to ask here - if the moderator would like to flag this and have me remove it I can - can anybody recommend a person/company I can work with in a tutor/mentor relationship to go over specific things within my app? This would be a for a fee(hourly probably) to go over bigger picture things rather than programming code?

You can find a step-by-step tutorial here

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