Setup and Deployment of a WPF application

Question

Hi!

I'm currently developing a small WPF application using a file database (SQLCe).

Since I'm near release of the product and I've had no experience with setup and deployment I would like to hear your thoughts around this subject.

The application is small and the updates that I will make is minor database changes (such as alter tables, columns etc.) and dll updates.

I've tried to play around with ClickOnce deployment but I don't understand how updates to a database should be handled.

On the other hand a standard Setup and Deployment project feels rather complex for just a couple of database updates and dll replacements?

Which one of these two "tools" would you recommend for my given scenario?

Are there any best practises or other tools that can ease the setup and deployment work?

Cheers!

Answer 1

Try NSIS http://nsis.sourceforge.net/. It's a good tool and allows for custom update programs to be written quite easily. This would be able to handle all of the .dll replacements and is very suited for this type of deployment.

In terms of the database updates; if you’re going to be writing scripts to update the data base tables, you will need to consider how you’re going to connect to the local instance of the data base to run the scripts against the DB. The more automated the solution, you may want to consider an application to look up the location of the DB and execute the scripts at the run time of the NSIS script being run.

Small overhead, with a lot of flexibility.