Install Clickonce Programmatically Create
Nov 04, 2016 Walkthrough: Create a custom installer for a ClickOnce application.; 6 minutes to read +3; In this article. Any ClickOnce application based on an.exe file can be silently installed and updated by a custom installer. A custom installer can implement custom user experience during installation, including custom dialog boxes for security and maintenance operations. ClickOnce is a deployment technology that enables you to create self-updating Windows-based applications that can be installed and run with minimal user interaction. Visual Studio provides full support for publishing and updating applications deployed with ClickOnce technology if you have developed.
Clickonce Download
Ideally no window would pop up at all when setup.exe is invoked, but it would be nice to save the user from having to click 'OK' on installing pre-requisites and other options. Is that even possible with ClickOnce?
Peter Mortensen1 Answer
Additional Files
Install Clickonce Programmatically Create Windows 7
Additional components (files and DLL files) can be added automatically as part of the download in the property pages of your project 'Publish' > 'Application Files...'.
Prerequisties
As for prerequisties, this will require the users permission (unless you code this to perform a silent install when your application starts - not recommended and nasty solution). At work I got Infrastructure to roll out prerequisites such as .NET 3.5/4.0.
Silent ClickOnce install
To create a silent ClickOnce installer, set the MinimumRequiredVersion element in your WPF/Windows Forms project file to same version as ApplicationVersion.
If these version numbers are the same, the user will not be prompted with a dialog to update.
At work, I have automated this using a custom build number from TFS to set the version MinimumRequiredVersion and ApplicationVersion in the project file.
Peter Mortensen