Publish Profiles
Right-click the project → Publish. Visual Studio creates a publish profile. Choose a target: Folder, FTP, Azure, or IIS. The Publish wizard guides you through the settings.
# Equivalent CLI commands
# Framework-dependent (requires .NET on target machine, smaller file)
dotnet publish -c Release -r win-x64
# Self-contained (no .NET required, larger file)
dotnet publish -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained
# Single-file self-contained executable
dotnet publish -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained \
-p:PublishSingleFile=true \
-p:IncludeNativeLibrariesForSelfExtract=trueSelf-Contained vs Framework-Dependent
A framework-dependent publish is small (~100 KB) but requires .NET 10 to be installed on the target PC. A self-contained publish bundles the runtime (~60 MB) so it runs on any Windows machine without any prerequisites.
MSIX Packaging
MSIX is the modern Windows packaging format. It provides clean installs, automatic updates, and access to the Microsoft Store. Add a Windows Application Packaging Project to your solution and set it as the startup project.
ClickOnce Deployment
ClickOnce deploys to a URL or file share. Users install with one click and the app auto-updates. Enable it in Project Properties → Publish → ClickOnce.
Congratulations!
You have completed all 35 lessons of the Visual Studio 2026 Tutorial! You now have a solid foundation in C# 14, .NET 10, WinForms, databases, REST APIs, testing, AI-assisted coding, and deployment. The best next steps are to build a real project, contribute to open source on GitHub, explore ASP.NET Core for web development, or dive into .NET MAUI for cross-platform apps. Happy coding!
✔ ASP.NET Core 10 — web APIs and Blazor ✔ .NET MAUI — iOS, Android, macOS, Windows apps ✔ Azure Functions — serverless cloud computing ✔ SignalR — real-time web communication ✔ gRPC — high-performance RPC ✔ ML.NET — machine learning in C# ✔ Orleans — distributed actor framework