Third Shelf

In our build process, using Team Foundation Build, we decided to use ClickOnce for application deployment. In this post I’ll try to set the lay of the land. In the following couple of posts I will take you through the process of setting up a clickonce deployment.

Choosing the deployment strategy

There are essentially two different ways to deploy clickonce applications. They are:

1. Physical media such as CD or DVD
2. Network share or web

Deciding on the strategy that will work for you is largely determined by the available bandwidth at the client site. If there is none to very little bandwidth, or no internet connectivity, choose CD / DVD. Otherwise choose Network share or web.

We opted for the web strategy and so I will base the series around this strategy.

Lay of the land

Assume that we have one build server and one deployment server. The build server will push the build artifacts to the deployment server from where clients will use clickonce to install the application. The application is pushed to the deployment server after every build with a new version number.

To make the explanations easier we will setup a hypothetical configuration and base the deployment configuration on it. Our hypothetical solution consists of a single application, which we will call App. Below is a diagram that demonstrates this configuration:

Note: To hide the published share simply name it with a trailing dollar sign i.e. “Published$”.

Initial configuration

First of all we need a folder on the deployment server to push the build artifacts to. For this, create a published folder on the deployment server and share it with modify permissions granted to the TFSSERVICE account. Remember the TFSSERVICE account that TFS uses for the build service?

Furthermore, we need to configure Internet Information Services (IIS) to interpret the clickonce files correctly according to their extension. For this, add the following MIME types in IIS:

.application    application/x-ms-application
.manifest       application/x-ms-manifest
.deploy         application/octet-stream

If you are using IIS 6.0, have a look at this article “IIS 6.0 Does Not Serve Unknown MIME Types”.

In the next installment I’ll discuss the different files that describe the application and deployment.