Visual Studio 2008 C#: Auto-Increment Version numbers

From what I'm seeing online, it seems the only thing in VS that auto-increments the Version numbers is if it's a website. For applications, it seems you either manually have to do it or you have to have a post build event and call a function or small app to do it for you. But, that's only what I'm seeing when I google it and when I've tried messing around with it myself. My questions are:

Can an application auto-increment the version number on a successful build without having to do the afore mentioned? Like a checkbox hidden deep in VS or something?
If no, is there a way to Publish an application rather than it being published as a website?
If it can, is that even the write way to go?

I know I've seen some instances where you can use the install package to increment the number, but my boss would like to start seeing how many times we build the applications so he can show to our customer the work being put into the application. If anyone can help me, that'd be great. Hope you all are having a good day. Thanks.

Well, I'm not going to accept your answer just yet because it isn't fully what I'm looking for, but I do like that. It does show different numbers whenever I build the application, but it's not like the build number goes up by one. It goes up by whatever the value from the calculation is. They would definitely think we did a lot of work though. :)

XstreamINsanity 2010-08-25 13:32:33

You could then take a look at the official docs from Microsoft: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/k49w9389(vs.71).aspx

rlbisbe 2010-08-25 13:39:36

Yeah, unfortunately that doesn't increment build on every successful build. It simply uses the day and time values which would seem inconsistent as if I build the application once in two hours, the revision value will jump up 3600 numbers. I only want it to jump 1 number. I saw an add-on out there for the VS UI, but I'm not sure if I want to use it yet. http://autobuildversion.codeplex.com/

XstreamINsanity 2010-08-25 14:03:09

HA!, if only we had those. :) Our change logs are verbal and our bug/feature database is non-existant. I wish we had them but we have no time to implement them (small 3 man team).

XstreamINsanity 2010-08-25 13:27:36

You don't use source control for three people? You are probably wasting more time than it would take to install one.

Lou Franco 2010-08-25 13:38:26

No, we use source control, but that wouldn't be a valid count either as we commit maybe more than is required. For instance, I see that a word is spelled wrong, I change it and commit it. And within one day, I may commit the same file 10 times, all for small spelling nuances. And I'm REALLY HORRIBLE at committing because if something isn't formatted correctly (3 blank spaces from the beginning of an if statement to the first line), I edit and commit. But we use Subversion and in the last 3 months have committed 400+ times.

XstreamINsanity 2010-08-25 13:41:34

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Visual Studio 2008 C#: Auto-Increment Version numbers

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