InstallSite Blog : ClickOnce

PDC2008: Windows Installer and ClickOnce in Windows 7

stefan — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 16:13:10 GMT

This week Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC2008) took place in Los Angeles. Several new and improved products and technologies were introduced there, like Windows 7, Windows Azure (Microsoft's "cloud" operating system) and Visual Studio 2010. I wasn't there but while I'm watching the session recordings I'll blog about PDC news that I think are interesting for setup developers and application deployment.

My first PDC2008 blog post is about Windows Installer and ClickOnce in Windows 7. Tyler Robinson, Lead Program Manager in the Application Deployment team, gave one session at PDC2008, and it's available as a recording on Channel 9:

Windows 7: Deploying Your Application with Windows Installer (MSI) and ClickOnce

Here are some bits from this session...

Windows Installer 4.5

The first 25 minutes of the 85 minutes session, Tyler actually talks about MSI 4.5, which is the latest released version of Windows Installer. He explains the intention behind the changes in MSI 4.5 and mentions how they can be combined to create smarter setups, illustrated with some demos.

Tyler also mentions that MSI 4.5 will be included in the next service packs for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, as opposed to Vista RTM, Vista SP1 and Server 2008 RTM which come with MSI 4.0.

ClickOnce, .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and the new Client Profile Configuration Designer

From 0:24:50 to 0:38:20 Tyler talks about the ClickOnce functionality and improvements in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, technologies that are already available today. He also covers the .NET Client Profile which should streamline redistribution of the .NET Framework, not only for ClickOnce but also Windows Installer or other setup technologies (but he doesn't discuss the limitations of Client Profile).

At 0:31:15 Tyler introduces the Client Profile Configuration Designer which has just been made available as beta. It's essentially a tool that can chain multiple packages such as the .NET Framework and other prerequisites, as well as ClickOnce packages, MSI based setups or even scripts. It provides a seamless and customizable user interface with one progress bar across all the packages, and can either defer reboots requests until the end, or handle reboots between packages gracefully. Optionally it can also create a combined uninstall experience instead of separate entries in the Add/Remove Programs control panel. The Client Profile Configuration Designer can be downloaded from windowsclient.net/wpf/ in the Deployment section.

MSI 5 in Windows 7, and a first look at InstallShield 2010

0:41:15 is the starting point for the second part of Tyler's session where he covers new, pre-release products. Windows 7 will include MSI 5.0 which he promises will bring up to 20% faster installation times and improved reliability.

Uninstalling a digitally signed package from the Add/Remove Programs control panel will now show the appropriate UAC dialog with the gray banner and your product name instead of the "scary" version with the yellow banner and the warning about an "unknown program" that wants to modify your computer.

The Lock Permissions and Service Configuration standard actions have been improved. Tyler mentions inheritance in the LockPermissions table but doesn't go into more details, and I've haven't had the time yet to download the new SDK documentation.

You can now add hyperlink controls on dialogs and there's built-in print functionality for the EULA dialog.

To make systems administrators' lives easier the MSI team has added functionality to perform limited Windows Installer operations on "offline" disk images in WIM format. This enables administrators to inventory the applications in the image and perform patch applicability checks without having to boot into the image.

MSI 5 will improve support for per-user applications, allowing you to create a single msi package that can be installed per-machine or per-user, and only displays the elevation prompt if per-machine is selected. This includes automatic redirection of files and registry entries to per-user locations, which are now documented in the official guidelines. For example, ProgramFilesFolder is automatically set to %localappdata%\programs if you do a per-user install. Of course, a per-user installation can't do any machine-wide modifications like installing services or GAC assemblies. In his demo at 1:04:10 Tyler uses an alpha-release of InstallShield 2010 which he expects to go into beta early next year.

There was no information if or when MSI 5.0 will be made available as a redistributable for older versions of Windows.

Q&A

Finally, starting at 1:10:25, Tyler spends 15 minutes answering questions from the audience, or in some cases deferring the reply to the Windows Installer Team Blog.

This concludes my first PDC2008 post. I plan to write more in the next days.

How To Write an Automatic Update System

stefan — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 14:18:00 GMT

Here's a link to an eight part series which describes different approaches to inform your customers about available updates to your application and to automatically download and install those updates.

How To Write an Automatic Update System
(this is the last part of the seris which has links to the previous parts)

Note that msi setups should not be updated by replacing single files. Instead you should use a .msp patch file and run it to update your application. The mechanism decribed in the article should work well for patches, too. If you digitally sign your patch, and shipped the key in your original .msi file (in the MsiPatchCertificate table) you can even install the patch without requiring administrator privileges. In this case the service that Nir describes in part 5 of the series is obsolete.

The open source Windows Installer XML toolset (WiX) includes an auto-update solution for Windows Installer setups. It is using XML files in the popular RRS format.

Deploying a Client/Server application using MSI and ClickOnce

stefan — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 20:18:00 GMT

This article at CodeProject explains in detail how to deploy a web service project. It uses a combination of Visual Studio and Orca to build an MSI setup for the server part. A SQL Server database is also installed with this project. For the client side a ClickOnce setup is created, also with Visual Studio. Nice article, with code snippets and illustrating screen shots.

WSE 3 Deployment: MSI and ClickOnce

German: dotnetpro Schwerpunkt-Heft Setup & Deployment

stefan — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 10:38:00 GMT

(This article is only available in German)

Im aktuellen Heft 08/2007 der Zeitschrift dornetpro dreht sich alles um die Software-Installation. Insgesamt zehn Artikel zu Themen wie ClickOnce, Installationsprogramme mit Visual Studio, InnoSetup und Nullsoft Scriptable Install System sind im Heft zu finden.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Einer der Artikel ist kostenlos online verfügbar, alle anderen gibt's nur für Abonennten - dotnetpro ist nicht am Kiosk erhältlich.

Es gibt ein kostenloses Zwei-Monats-Probeabo, leider beginnt es aber erst mit dem nächsten Heft. Als Abonnent kann man jedoch alle bisherigen Ausgaben online abrufen und so an die Deployment-Artikel gelangen. Wer sich gleich zu einem Vollabo entschließt, kann Heft 08/2007 kostenlos vom Verlag anfordern (Kontakt über mich).

Introduction to ClickOnce video presentation

stefan — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 12:02:00 GMT

This is a 45 minutes video + slides recording of a presentation at the JAOO european developer conference. Microsoft C# MVP Cathi Gero talks about the problems that ClickOnce addresses and how it works.

Deploying & Maintaining Smart Client Apps using ClickOnce

ClickOnce, part of version .NET 2.0, allows the deployment of Windows-based rich client apps by placing the app files on a Web or file server and providing the user with a link. This session covers VS 2005 deployment capabilities for online and offline support, rolling back to previous versions of an app, listing an app in the Start Menu and control panel, and zone-based debugging.

Presentation recording at InfoQ

ClickOnce Tips and Tricks Article in CoDe Magazine

stefan — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 10:58:00 GMT

In the Nov/Dec 2006 issue of the CoDe magazine, MVP Julia Lerman writes about her experience with ClickOnce and shares some tricks.

ClickOnce for the Real World, Not Hello World
After four years of trying out every iteration of Web server application deployment that Microsoft created for .NET, ClickOnce has finally allowed me to succeed in deploying one particularly complex smart client application. But I still had to tear a few more hairs out before I got it working and came to love ClickOnce. I’m writing this article to share some of the not-so-obvious ways (including a hack or two) to use ClickOnce for application deployment.

The article explains how to add additional files to your ClickOnce deployment, and how to create updates for them. She also touches topics like authentication and creating desktop shortcuts (which has to be done by the application itself on first run). She closes with some troubleshooting tips and FAQs.

For non-subscribers only one third of the article is available for online reading:
http://www.code-magazine.com/Article.aspx?quickid=0611041

You can subscribe to CoDe Magazine here at amazon.com

Three articles about ClickOnce at CodeProject.com

stefan — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 15:21:00 GMT

Malpani Amol, .NET developer and conference speaker from India, has published three articles on ClickOnce at CodeProject.com: