ClickOnce deployment

27 Nov 2007 4:01 AM

Smokey Grindel

Anyone know how you can initially deploy a clickonce application to say 100
workstations with out each of them having to go to the web site to get the
applicaiton?

What we do now is we deploy our application and updates via group policy in
our AD domain...

what we want to do is have the updates done through the clickonce
application deployment and update system so it checks for new updates when
the user runs the app... but right now it seems like each user has to go to
the published website to install the app initially... this is the bad
part... we need the app to be on the start menu straight out... any way to
do this? We have Active directory, group policy and login scripts at our
disposal... thanks!

27 Nov 2007 8:12 AM

Marc Gravell

Yes, this works out-of-the-box, but you need to get the "Publishing
Folder Location" (and optionally Installation Folder URL) correct, as
this gets burnt into the ClickOnce deployment metadata. Example below.

Marc

===

Made new "Windows Forms" project: "ClickOnceTest"; references System,
System.Windows.Forms

Single code file:

static class Program {
    static void Main() {
        System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show("Version 1");
    }
}

Publish to "http://localhost/ClickOnceTest/" with online/offline
enabled

(I've also taken this web-site offline to demonstrate that it isn't
needed at deployment)

Run the ".application" file from a UNC (or copy local [inc. the sub-
folders], whatever) - note that this is the ".application" *outside*
of the versioned sub-folders

Accept install; I get "Version 1" - i.e. it has installed from the
local media and is running version 1.

Run from start-menu; I get "Version 1" - i.e. the local cache is
running version 1.

Now edit out program; to be imaginative, I've changed the message to
"Version 2", and re-published (web-site back on-line)

Now without doing anything special, run the app from the start menu

It tells me that a new version is available; I accept this update, and
get "Version 2".

Run again from start-menu; no extra dialogs, get "Version 2"

So now it has detected the change from the web-site (even though we
installed from a UNC) and updated.

27 Nov 2007 1:27 PM

christery

You could look at deploying it with SoftGrid as an alternative

//CY