The Xceed Component Installer is an executable file (.exe) that is downloaded from the Xceed web site and runs a standard Windows Installer for the components.
A new installer is made available with every release of the components. The installer will update an already installed version.
It is important to understand that the installer's purpose is to prepare an application developer's machine to write code that uses the components. It is a Software Development Kit (SDK). It is not meant to be run on client machines. See the deploy article for information on how to distribute the components with a finished application.
The installer copies all the necessary files for development into an installation folder. The default folder is C:\Program Files (x86)\Xceed\. The following are installed.
.dll)
The assemblies (.dll files) for all the components are located in <installation folder>\Xceed Zip for .NET vX.X\Bin. This is for convenience, allowing an application to reference multiple different components from a central location.
The .dll files directly in Bin target the classic .NET Framework version 4.0. This is to ensure maximum compatibility with older applications. Builds with newer versions of the framework are provided. All builds are mostly identical. The API is the same. But some builds include functionality that could not be provided under older .NET framework versions. Those special cases are noted in the reference documentation where it applies.
Assemblies are mostly forward compatible with regards to the .NET Framework. This means that an application that targets the .NET Framework version 4.8.1, for example, can reference the Xceed assemblies that target .NET Framework version 4.0, 4.5, 4.7 without issue.
Application that targets the .NET 10, for example, can reference the Xceed assemblies that target .NET 5.0 and .NET Standard 2.0 without issue.
There are several sub-folders under Bin.
NET45: The components, compiled to target the classic .NET Framework version 4.5.
NET47: The components, compiled to target the classic .NET Framework version 4.7.
NET50: The components, compiled to target .NET 5.0.
NETStandard: The components, compiled to target .NET Standard 2.0.
SFX: The Xceed Self-Extractor binary modules. See the Self-extracting zip files article for details.
Signed DLLs: Contains all of the same assemblies, but each file is digitally signed and timestamped. A 45-day trial license key is included with the installer. It enables immediate use of the components to evaluate their usefulness. There is a license key file for each component. The files are located in <installation folder>\Xceed Zip for .NET vX.X\Bin\*_Key.txt .
They are text files that can be opened with any text editor. They contain the name of the component, the license key and the date when the key expires.
See the licensing article for details on how to apply the license in an application.
Documentation
The installer includes the full offline documentation of the components for Visual Studio. This means both concept article like this one and reference documentation of the entire public API of the components. This allows the F1 key in Visual Studio to open the Xceed documentation to the article relevant to the symbol under the current position of the cursor.
To view the documentation, the Visual Studio Help Viewer must have been installed before the Xceed installer is run.
The most up to date documentation is always available on the web site.
Samples
Sample code and applications are installed by default in C:\Xceed Samples\. These can be useful to learn by example and see real-life usage of the components. The samples have their own section in this documentation.
Start Menu shortcuts
The installer adds shortcuts to the Start Menu
Now that the assemblies are on the development machine at a known location, it is time to reference them in a project. The Visual Studio documentation provides a general set of instructions on how to add references using the Reference Manager. Here are instructions tailored for Xceed components.
To open an existing project, from the Visual Studio menu bar, select File -> Open -> Project/Solution...
To create a new project, from the Visual Studio menu bar, select File -> New-> Project...
Once the project is open, it is time to reference the Xceed components into the project.
In Solution Explorer, right-click the References or Dependencies node, and then choose Add Project Reference from the context menu. You can right-click the project node and select Add from the fly-out menu to choose this option, too.
Reference Manager opens and lists the available references by group.
Click Browse.... A Select the files to reference... dialog opens.
<installation folder>\Xceed Zip for .NET vX.X\Bin or one of the subdirectories that corresponds to the .NET Framework version closest to the application.
.dll files based on the component that is to be used. Use the table below for guidance. | Component | Assemblies (.dll) to reference |
|---|---|
| Xceed Zip for .NET | Xceed.Compression.dll Xceed.Compression.Formats.dll (optional) Xceed.FileSystem.dll Xceed.FileSystem.Windows.dll (optional. Do not use in .NETStandard) Xceed.Zip.dll |
| Xceed Streaming Compression for .NET | Xceed.Compression.dll Xceed.Compression.Formats.dll |
| Xceed SSH/SFtp for .NET | Xceed.FileSystem.dll Xceed.FileSystem.Windows.dll (optional. Do not use in .NETStandard) Xceed.SSH.Client.dll Xceed.SSH.Core.dll Xceed.SSH.Protocols.dll Xceed.SSH.SFtp.dll |
| Xceed FTP for .NET | Xceed.Compression.dll Xceed.FileSystem.dll Xceed.Ftp.dll |
| Xceed Tar/GZip for .NET | Xceed.Compression.dll Xceed.Compression.Formats.dll Xceed.FileSystem.dll Xceed.FileSystem.Windows.dll (optional. Do not use in .NETStandard) Xceed.GZip.dll Xceed.Tar.dll |
| Xceed Real-Time Zip for .NET | Xceed.Compression.dll Xceed.Compression.Formats.dll (optional) Xceed.FileSystem.dll (optional) Xceed.FileSystem.Windows.dll (optional. Not used in .NETStandard) Xceed.Zip.dll |
Once the assemblies have been added to the Reference Manager, click on the OK button.
Prior versions of the components (versions 6.8 and below) built for .NET 4 contained version numbers (v#.#) in their names. As of version 6.9, the names of the assemblies do not contain version numbers. This makes updating to newer releases much simpler.