ClickOnce Deployment in .NET Framework 2.0

Microsoft has released a new technology named ClickOnce that is designed to solve the deployment issues for a windows forms application. This new technology not only provides an easy application installation mechanism but also enables easy deployment of upgrades to existing applications.

This technology works as follows:

1.) You create a Windows forms application and use the Publish option to deploy the application onto any of the following locations: File System, Local Web Server, FTP Site, or a Remote Web Site.
2.) Once the application is deployed onto the target location, the users of the application can browse to the publish.htm file and install the application onto their machine. Note that publish.htm file is the entry point for installing the application and this will be discussed in the later part of this article.
3.) Once the user has installed the application, a shortcut icon will be added to the desktop and the application will also be listed in the Control Panel/Add Remove Programs.
4.) When the user launches the application again, the manifest will contain all the information to decide if the application should go to the source location and check for updates to the original application. Let us say, for instance, a newer version of the application is available, it will be automatically downloaded and made available to the user. Note that when the new version is downloaded, it is performed in a transacted manner meaning that either the entire update is downloaded or nothing is downloaded. This will ensure that the application integrity is preserved.