Making a single ClickOnce installer for two applications

Question

I am using Visual Studio C# 2008 Express Edition. I have a Solution that has several projects, most of which are class libraries but two of which are executable projects (a GUI and a command-line interface).

Is there a good way to make a single ClickOnce installer that installs both of the executable projects?

If I make one of the projects be Referenced by the other project, I think it will let me do what I want, but that seems like a bad idea because it doesn't properly represent the real dependencies: neither executable project depends on the other, they just share a lot of code in the class libraries, and I'd like them to be installed together.

Answer 1

The purpose of a ClickOnce installer is that it installs a single application. If you just want to have other stuff available, you could probably just add references, but it wouldn't allow the user to load it easily. Don't worry too much about "sharing DLLs" I think the click-once system will find duplicate references. In any case it doesn't matter, because ClickOnce manages and ensures that the DLLs are up to date when the program runs.

Answer 2

Check out one of the MVP's responses. Seem like reasonable suggestions.

Answer 3

Hmm, maybe, you could just create a main splash page form, and have that launch forms in the two other projects. That way you only have a single application, but it does the two different things.