How can I get a ClickOnce app to only download an assembly when it's required?

Question

Is there any way to create a clickonce deployment where certain assemblies or files in the manifest can be designated as not needing to be downloaded unless the user performs some action in the application that requires them?

Currently, we have a fairly monolithic ClickOnce application and are researching ways to refactor it into separate assemblies.

I am trying to find a way to reduce the initial payload size when I publish an update and only download assemblies when they are required by the user. Is this possible within the ClickOnce architecture? Is there an alternative?

Thanks, -MrB

Answer 1

Here's the walkthrough: Walkthrough: Downloading Assemblies on Demand with the ClickOnce Deployment API Using the Designer

Update I would suggest publishing by using the Visual Studio .csproj file. I don't use TFS, but I do use MSBuild. When I need to produce different manifest files for different environments, I have my build script copy and modify the .csproj file as necessary and then build the Publish target on the modified .csproj. If you want to change which files are require/optional during your build, you could do the same thing and modify the .csproj file before building it.