This is a first part of the discussion about what it takes to deploy Crystal Reports 2008 based project created in Visual Studio.

Dependencies

When you develop something which involves Crystal Reports you need to deploy CR 2008 run-time along with your project.

As you know by now, Visual Studio 2008 comes with Crystal Reports 2008 Basic included, which is really a CR v. 10. But if you have Crystal Reports 2008 installed on-top of it, you need to worry about CR v.12.

IMPORTANT. Do not confuse two!

When you deploy your Visual Studio 2008 project you need to use appropriate MSI – either one included with VS or an updated CR 2008 run-time provided by SAP (a new home for Crystal Reports).

So, where is it?

Before you rash digging SAP web-site, let’s examine your local drive. There is a nice place there

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bootstrapper\Packages\

1. If you did not install regular CR 2008, you would find only one folder for your CR:
   

   C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bootstrapper\Packages\CrystalReports10_5\

   and this is where you want to grab distribution package from (64 or 32 bit).
    

2. Otherwise, even though there is
   

   C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bootstrapper\Packages\CrystalReports 12.0\

   folder, it may not be much of help since there is no actual files.
   Do not worry. Check product.xml there. It would tell you few things you need: a) location/URL of MSI you need, and b) required related products – MS .Net Framework 2.0 and Microsoft.Data.Access.Components.2.8.

Now we good to go with the next step.

Note: Make sure you have latest runtime available for you – visit SAP download page.