Building a ClickOnce deployment outside of Visual Studio can be a difficult task. One point I want to make clear is that there is no magic going on to make your application deployable using ClickOnce. Well, unless you are using the tooling inside of Visual Studio, in which case there is a lot of magic happening. Much to its credit, Visual Studio does make it very easy to setup and publish a ClickOnce deployment for your application. That said, my suggestion would be to just use Visual Studio if it fits your workflow. However, if you need a fully automated solution to create a ClickOnce deployment outside of Visual Studio, then continue reading. In my environment, my builds are automated using NAnt, which are then built on a build server using CruseControl.Net.
My end goal with automating the ClickOnce deployment was to mimic the output as created by Visual Studio. I didn't have to do this, but I wanted to just incase I might ever need to resort back to using Visual Studio. I didn't want to get caught in a situation where my automated ClickOnce deployment files conflict with the files generated by Visual Studio.
In general, a ClickOnce deployment requires two files. An application manifest and a deployment manifest. The application manifest contains details of the application. Some of these details include dependencies, security privileges, and a complete listing of every file required by the application.
The deployment manifest contains details of, you guessed it, the deployment. For this file, my focus is primarily on the deployment strategy. It is also worth noting that this file will contain a dependency which is basically a pointer to the application manifest.
I know I'm only scratching the surface of what these two files actually contain. I'm calling out the details which are directly relevant here. I'm trying hard to avoid using the phrase, "beyond the scope of this article", but there it is. As much as I dislike that phrase, I'm using it anyway. Really, if you want to know more about these two files, look at the Microsoft documentation.
As I went through this process, I did find a walkthrough in the Microsoft documentation that you may find helpful. I followed the steps myself, but it didn't take me where I wanted to go and was hard to follow due to lack of detail. When I finished the walkthrough, I had more questions than when I started. But it did help to guide me in the right direction, so I want to point it out.
Steps to automate a ClickOnce application
1. Obtain or create a ".pfx" key file for signing the manifest files. The key file can also be used to sign the assembly/executable of the application if wanted, but not required. You can create a key file using the "Signing" tab of the project properties window. I think there are other kinds of keys that can be used for signing, but I am not an expert in this area so I'm saying as little about it as possible.
2. Add an "app.manifest" file to the project. This will give you a physical file that you can make custom edits to if needed. I personally didn't need to make any custom edits, but at least I have that option if I ever need to. This file will get updated post build using the Mage.exe utility.
3. Build the project/application to get all the files required for the application to run. Also, copy any extra files needed to deploy with the app such as the main app icon. The goal here is to create a folder containing your entire application. All your resource files, data files, help files, referenced dlls, everything. I use NAnt to automate this process.
4. Make any last changes to configuration files or whatever content you need to change for the deployment target. This is important. Do not change any application content after the application manifest has been updated because it will make the application manifest invalid. The application manifest contains hash codes for every file. This is a security measure to prevent any tampering with the files.
5. Use Mage.exe to update the application manifest. Note, if you are using the ".deploy" extension for your files, you'll want to do this step before appending the ".deploy" extension to the files. If this doesn't make sense right now, don't worry about it yet. I'll explain more about this with web hosted deployment. Below is an example of this command.
mage.exe -Update build\ClickOnceExample-Release\ClickOnceExample.exe.manifest
-ToFile "build\ClickOnceExample-Release\Application Files\1.1.0.6125\ClickOnceExample.exe.manifest"
-FromDirectory "build\ClickOnceExample-Release\Application Files\1.1.0.6125"
-Version 1.1.0.6125
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