I have a very complicated application to deploy and update. I mentioned a while ago that Chris Kinsman helped me overcome a limitation of the application updater block. After that I had to work pretty hard to get it to work with an insane set of rules and layers of applications. A few things I had to deal with:
1) I did not want to download complete applications (including all dll’s) for every update. THerefore I needed to have a special folder to dump updates into and launch my application from.
2) I have three different related applications to launch and wanted them all to be responsible for downloading the same bits. Therefore, they each had to have knowledge of the latest version downloaded even if that was from a different application
3) My webserver location is dynamic
4) complicated configuration issues abounded
5) I had to do a lot of customization of the updater block to get it to work my way.
When all of that was said and done I still had a huge task ahead of me: creating an MSI that would install this whole crazy mess. I have been working on this all day and am near the end. I just learned how to use the launch conditions to force WSE2 to be installed as well.
It is amazing how entire days get soaked up with things like this. However, now I have a very intimate understanding of the Application Updater Block. I have not looked at ClickOnce, but I sure hope I’ll have as much access to make changes I want as I do with the raw code supplied with the AUB.
I miss weekends.
Posted from BLInk!
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