In deployment, you can create a new setup and deployment project. In this project, you can add the project output and create a setup.exe file. After creating an executable file, you need to login into the server and execute the setup.exe file to install the application. On the other hand, in publishing, you need to right-click the application in the Solution Explorer and select Publish to publish the application. Then, you specify a location where the application is to be published. The users can then install the application from the location where you have published it and run locally even when the computer is offline.

Merge Module projects are used to package the files and components that are shared between multiple applications. The Merge Module project file contains the .msm extension. The .msm file includes files, resources, registry entries, and setup logic. This file is merged with a Windows installer (.msi) file to correctly install the shared files. If a single merge module is used by more than one application, then you need to add that merge module in the package only once.

Copy Web Site is a tool used to deploy the Web site by copying its content files. The Copy Web Site tool also checks whether or not the latest version of a file is present at the destination. If files of the most recent version are found at the destination, then the Copy Web Site tool does not superimpose the older version of files. The Copy Web Site deployment tool consists of the following main entities:
• Project source - Specifies the source directory, which contains the contents and references of a Web site at development time. In simple words, you can say that the project source specifies the site that you currently have opened in Visual Studio 2010. The Copy Web Site tool picks all the files for deployment from this location.
• Project destination - Specifies the destination folder where you have to deploy the application. This destination directory can be placed on remote computers or servers, which allow you to copy the Web site contents using the Front Page Server Extensions, FTP, or HTTP protocol implementations for content transfer.
• Synchronizing two Web sites - Synchronizes two Web sites by copying each other's files. Synchronization checks the files on the local and remote sites and ensures that all files on both sites are up to date.

The Copy Project command copies only the files required to run the project and pastes it on the target server. It does not deploy the complete project; therefore, IIS directory settings are not automatically configured.

No. the Windows applications use the Setup Project template; whereas, the Web applications use the Web Setup Project template. After the deployment, their installation takes place in the similar way.