Deploy to My Computer

NOTE: Please make a backup of this file before you edit it. Visual Studio is very picky about the formatting and it is easy to screw things up!

This is one of those gems on the web that needs to be linked to so that we can all remember how to do this. The idea here is streamlining compact framework development by enabling your CF projects to re-target and run on your desktop. This is more a simulator instead of an emulator for application development. Daniel Moth describes how to set it up here. I’ll summarize as well:

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.

I can’t tell you how much time this saves in developing compact framework applications. Just remember that in the end you still have to test on a real device.