Do I want Publish or Release Build in VB.net?

Question

I wrote a little (like 40 lines little) Winforms application with VB.net in Visual Studio 2010. Now I've released the code as a Google Code project. It's easy for a developer to get the source but I'd like to make it easy to install too.

What I did was make a release build then zip up what it created, this included a setup.exe. There was also an option to "publish" my project which looks like it can enable update checks and other stuff.

In my case, I just want to make it easy for a casual user who happens to want to try out this app with as few clicks as needed. Was putting up the release build the best way to do that?

Answer 1

I think the "Best" method is subjective. However, there's nothing wrong with the way you did it. It's how I would have done it.

If you plan on providing updates, you could also look at ClickOnce (which is the "Publish" option you mentioned), but I like the way you did it better.

With ClickOnce, you'd probably need to purchase a certificate from a CA and sign your code. If you fail to do this, then anyone who tries to use your app gets a scary security warning. They can bypass it, but it would discourage anyone who is not familiar with it.