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I am looking at the "click once" publishing feature of visual studio 2015 to deploy easily a simple application c# desktop application.

However, there two things that I'd like to achieve and I can't find out to do it:

  • Firsly, I'd like to specify the installation folder on the client machine. Currently, when I install the application, the app and other dlls are installed somewhere in AppData\Local\Apps...
  • Secondly, I'd like to prevent the application from automatically opening after the installation is complete.

Any suggestions?

I could use another installer package, but I was intending to use the updating feature from the "click-once" publishing feature.

Thanks

Alexis Le Compte
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  • You can't choose where to install clickonce apps to locally. As you've seen they're always installed to the local user's clickonce app cache in their user profile (ref: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/267k390a.aspx) – G Davison Sep 23 '16 at 10:05

1 Answers1

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ClickOnce's key advantage is not requiring enhanced permissions on the client to install locally, but the price for this is app files have to be stored within the ClickOnce cache within the user's Profile. Additionally the app is generally launched or installed and launched by clicking on the manifest file so you don't have separate control over installing vs execution.

If installing your app in a known location is a key requirement you may need to reevaluate your options for packaging as ClickOnce can't support this.

The CO auto-update feature is very handy however there are some other SO questions which address how to make auto-updating apps without ClickOnce at How to automatically update an application without ClickOnce?

Community
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G Davison
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