Deploy Click once as a single file?

Question

I am looking to use click once to deploy an application for internal use, When publishing to the network share it creates several files and folders. (manifest, ApplicationFiles etc)

Is there a way to bundle this up as a single file, I do not fancy the idea of allowing other users access to the application Files folder that is created, I would rather just give them the exe and have it take care of everything else.

Does anyone have experience with this, or am I stuck with the application Folder, Application Manifest, and setup file all being in the same directory for installation.

Answer 1

There is not a way to package the whole application folder and files into one file, like an MSI with ClickOnce.

You could code something on your own to have a shell app that use ClickOnce and its only file would be your app compressed. The shell would download that compressed file to the client's machine and would unzip etc.

You could also InstallShield Limited Edition that comes with VS 2012/2013 in the Other Projects, Setup and Deployment but that does give you the ClickOnce easy of deployment features. You could use the InstallShield setup to be your compress file in your shell clickonce app and then just use Process.Start to launch the InstallShield setup. It should work.