Deploying application with ClickOnce to network share while being offsite

Question

I have application written in Visual Studio 2008 which I deploy with ClickOnce to network share while at work. Sometimes I work from home and I don't have VPN that allows access of shares to deploy application from outside of company. Is there a way that I could simple pack it, send thru FTP and unpack it on the server so that ClickOnce never notices it's been delivered differently and so it doesn't loose numeration and everything associated with normal network deployment? It's C#, .NET 3.5 application.

Answer 1

Absolutely! You can publish your application to any folder and then move it to the deployment folder from where the users install it.

To do this, set the Publishing Folder Location to a local folder, something like C:\_Publish\AppName. (Whatever makes you happy).

Set the Installation Folder URL to the address on the file server. This must be a UNC share path (or a webserver). So something like \\myservername\mysharename\myapp --> This is the path used by the users to install the application.

Publish it, zip it up, and move the files to the location specified in the Installation URL. (myservername\mysharename\myapp).

Be sure to unzip in the root folder so it creates the directory structure correctly, and replaces the deployment manifest (.application) in the root folder that points to the right version.