How to: Publish an Updated Version of an Application

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After your application is published and users have installed the application and are using it, you might need to roll out updates to add new functionality or to provide bug fixes. With the default automatic updating capability of ClickOnce, this involves simply publishing a new version of your application.

In this example, you will publish a new version of the Bank Branch client application that includes the Credit Card Module. The new Composite UI Application Block module will then be added to the application through a ClickOnce update.

There are actually two ways to publish an updated version.

  • Method 1: The first (and easiest) way is to rebuild and redeploy a new version. This is basically the same as publishing an initial version. You simply add the new versioned folder to the Web server, and then update the default deployment manifest and bootstrapper on the Web server.

  • Method 2: If you have not changed the code in the current deployment and you just want to add new modules, you might want to deploy a version that is identical to the initial deployment, with the addition of the extra modules as the only change. This method ensures that the assemblies are not rebuilt, so that you know for certain that nothing else has changed.

    ClickOnce keeps a local cache of the assemblies installed. When retrieving an update, if it finds a file on the server that is identical to the local copy, it uses the local copy rather than copying the same file over the network. Therefore, if you do not rebuild the assemblies, the hash tags on them will not change, and the update will retrieve only the new modules that you have added.

To publish a completely new application version

  1. Modify the application for the new release.
  2. Build and test the application.
  3. Update the version number.
  4. Follow the same steps as you did for the initial installation, but include the Credit Card Module files.
  5. Copy the new deployment files to the Web server.

To publish a new application version by adding new modules to the deployed version

  1. Build and test the application.
  2. Copy the files from the production version into a new versioned folder.
  3. Add the modules that you want to include.
  4. Update the version in the application manifest and deployment manifest, and save and sign both of them.
  5. Publish the files to the Web server.

For more information about these options, see the following topics: