How to publish parallel installers using ClickOnce?

Question

I'm deploying a standalone application (VB 2005 w/ Crystal Reports) using ClickOnce.

My users have different IP addresses that they use to map to the same networked drive.

The best way I've come up with to get the installer out to them is to publish it twice manually:

ip.addr.number.001/PublishedHere/001/setup.exe

ip.addr.number.002/PublishedHere/002/setup.exe

and telling them to execute the appropriate installer.

Is there a way to do this better? It's no more work for my users, but I'd like less work for me. ;)

Thanks!

Answer 1

What matters when setting the publishing URL in a ClickOnce deployment is that the URL doesn't change. If you can hide the IP address behind a network path or a drive letter, you can deploy one version.

For example, if the drive is always mapped to the same letter, you can use a publishing file location like F:\PublishedHere. It doesn't matter what drive the user has mapped to F, as long as the F drive has the ClickOnce deployment on it.