Releasing WinForm Program Updates

Question

Hello,

Another quick question.

I'd like to release some updates for a WinForm program, but to date I have simply released an all-new compile. People have to un-install the old version and install the new version.

EDIT: I'm using an auto-generated InstalWizard. It preserves my file strucutre and places the [PrimaryProgramOutput] in a particular directory. I forget what this is called.

I bet there's a way to get around this, but I don't know what it's called. As you may guess, searches for "updates" "new version" "install" and the other obvious things I've tried have generated an impressive number of irrelevant results. >_<

I suspect this process has a particular name, which should point me in the right direction, but if it doesn't please link to a tutorial or something.

Thanks again, this site is great! :)

Answer 1

ClickOnce deployment is a great solution most of the time...

You can deploy to the web and when ever your users start the application it will check for updates and automatically update the application if there is a new version available.

It can also be configured not to update automatically but only to notify the user that there is a new version available and allow the user to control the update process.

Answer 2

I see from the tags you are using C#. Visual Studio can create Setup projects for these kind of tasks. The setup projects als contain a property RemovePreviousVersion, which will remove a previous version if the versioning of your setup is correct and the GUID of the application stays the same.

See this link for more information:
http://www.simple-talk.com/dotnet/visual-studio/updates-to-setup-projects/