Last edited on 7/30/07. Copyright Syncfusion., Inc

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1 Enabling ClickOnce deployment for applications that use the Syncfusion libraries... 2 Requirements... 2 Introduction... 2 Configuration... 2 Verify Dependencies... 4 Publish... 6 Test deployment... 8 Trust requirements Signing Additional settings Additional notes References Questions / Comments?... 14

2 Enabling ClickOnce deployment for applications that use the Syncfusion libraries Requirements Syncfusion Essential Studio 5.1 or later. Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 (or later). This article does not cover the deployment of applications using.net Framework version 1.1 or 1.0. Introduction ClickOnce technology enables Windows Forms applications to be deployed with almost the same ease as Web applications. Though it was introduced in earlier versions of the.net Framework, ClickOnce support has been greatly enhanced with version 2.0 of the.net Framework making it almost trivial to deploy an application. The purpose of this article is to walk through the steps needed for the deployment of a Windows Forms application that uses the Syncfusion libraries. For the most part these steps are no different from steps you would follow for the deployment of an application that does not use the Syncfusion libraries. Therefore this article does not attempt to cover every scenario that applies to such deployment as there are plenty of resources that deal with this already (check the References section for additional information). We picked a fairly complex application, the VSDemo sample that ships with our Essential Tools product, to use as a test case. The VSDemo sample uses several Syncfusion libraries (Tools, Edit and Grid) and should be fairly representative of a project that uses the Syncfusion libraries. You do not however, need this project. You can instead pick any other project including your own and follow along. There is nothing listed that is specific to this application. Configuration Open the VSDemo sample in Microsoft Visual Studio.NET This sample is commonly installed under %userprofile%\documents\syncfusion\essentialstudio\ \windows\tools.windows\sam

3 ples\2.0\featured Samples\VSDemo. You can create a copy if you would like to preserve the original sample for reference purposes. Open the properties for this project in Visual Studio.NET. Select the Publish page when the project property pages are displayed. Figure 1. ClickOnce Publish settings. There are two important settings that need to be entered on this dialog the Publishing location and the Installation URL. For our purpose, we have chosen to publish the files using ftp. The location of the FTP server and the path where the files are to be published is entered under Publishing Location. If authentication is required to access the Publishing Location (FTP server in this case), click the browse button next to the Publishing Location TextBox and enter authentication details. You will also observe that several additional publishing methods are available including publishing to a site that supports FrontPage server extensions.

4 Figure 2. Authentication Information to access the server where files are to be deployed to. The next step is to enter the Installation URL. This will be the base URL from where the ClickOnce application will be deployed. This needs to be http/https location or a file system reference. It should of course correspond to the FTP path that we used as the publishing location. The publishing process will create a file named publish.htm by default under the root folder of the ftp / http location. This will be the entry point to install the ClickOnce application. For example in our case the final published link will be Verify Dependencies

5 The next step is to verify that the ClickOnce runtime has all the information it needs on files that need to be deployed. As part of the publishing process ClickOnce will copy all assemblies and any additional files that the application requires to the remote site. Assemblies It is very critical that the ClickOnce runtime has a complete understanding of all non-system assemblies that are needed. Normally, this is not a problem and the ClickOnce system is able to obtain this information from the references list in Visual Studio.NET. o However, there is one Syncfusion specific gotcha here to watch out for. Many projects that use the Syncfusion assemblies may not have a direct reference to Syncfusion.Core.dll. However, this assembly is needed at runtime and the ClickOnce deployment will fail if this assembly is not copied over for deployment. If you look at your reference list and you do not see Syncfusion.Core please browse and add Syncfusion.Core as a reference (installed under $drive:\program Files\Syncfusion\Essential Studio\$version\precompiledassemblies\$version \2.0). o No additional steps are needed if CopyLocal is to True. If CopyLocal for the referenced assemblies is set to False, please click on the Application Files button and change the Publish Status for each of the Syncfusion assemblies (and any non-system assemblies that are referenced in a similar manner) to be Include from the automatically selected Prerequisite setting. If you do not make this change and any of the assemblies are marked as prerequisites the ClickOnce runtime will complain that the assembly so referenced needs to be in the GAC for the application to start. Additional content Any additional files that your application needs such as image files, SQL databases etc., should be made known to the ClickOnce publishing system. The easiest way to do this for additional content files is to mark them as Content (Build Action set to Content).

6 Figure 3. Application Files list. This list contains details on files that will be deployed. We have also provided a command line tool called NETDepends.exe that can take any assembly and dump a list of its dependencies. It comes with a help file, netdepends.htm and is included for download along with this article. You can use this tool to verify that all your non-system file dependencies are accounted for. You can check the list of files that will be deployed by clicking on the Application Files button on the Publish property page. Publish Once you have verified that all dependencies are correctly handled, you can click on the Publish Now button on the Publish property page to start the publishing process. The Visual Studio.NET IDE status bar will be updated with details on the status of the publishing process.

7 Please note that as part of the deployment process, files have a suffix.deploy added to them. This is a configurable setting but in most cases you do not need to make any changes. Shown below is a screenshot of the files list on the server. One level above this folder is where the deployment entry point, Publish.htm file is created. This is the file that users will have to navigate to install the ClickOnce application. Figure 4. Files on the server. Figure 5. Publish.htm the ClickOnce entry point on the server.

8 Test deployment Navigate to the URL - to test deployment. The following user interface is displayed by the browser. Figure 6. ClickOnce entry point. You can click on the Install button to start the download process. The ClickOnce runtime displays a note that the Publisher of the application cannot be verified. This can be fixed by signing the deployment manifest as detailed under the section Signing.

9 Figure 7. ClickOnce download in progress. The actual download will take a little time depending on the size of your application, download speed and connection to the server. Once installed locally the application will automatically startup and run.

10 Figure 8. ClickOnce deployed application on the end user s machine. If you selected The application is available offline as well on the Publish property page, a start menu entry will also be automatically added. This will allow the application to be run subsequently without having to navigate to the ClickOnce entry point URL. Figure 9. Online/Offline settings.

11 You can also view/change the installed ClickOnce application under Add/Remove programs in the control panel. Trust requirements The default trust requirement selected for Windows Forms applications is Full Trust. You can change this by selecting the Security property page. However, for applications that use Syncfusion user interface libraries, Full Trust is a requirement and we recommend that you do not change this setting. Figure 10. Code Access Security settings for the deployed application. Signing During the deployment test, the ClickOnce runtime warned us that the Publisher of the ClickOnce application could not be verified.

12 Figure 11. Security warning prior to application installation. To prevent this warning from being displayed you will have to sign your ClickOnce manifest with a valid Authenticode certificate from a certificate provider (such as Verisign / Thawte). For more details please refer to Authenticode links provided under the references section. Figure 12. Certificate Manager.

13 Once you obtain a key from a provider you should import it into the certificate store on your machine. To do this simply run CertMgr.exe (should be in your system path). When it comes up navigate to Personal\Certificates in the tree to the left. Right click on the certificates node and select AllTasks\Import. You will be presented with a certificate import wizard that will walk you through the process of importing files provided by your certification authority. Once you have a key installed in your certificate store navigate to the Signing property page. You can then select the certificate you wish to use for the signing process by clicking on the Select from Store option. Once you sign the ClickOnce manifest in this manner the ClickOnce runtime will display a much more reassuring dialog to your end users. Your end users can install your application confident of the source of the application and of the fact that it has not been tampered with. Figure 13. Deploying a signed application. Additional settings There are several additional settings that can be tweaked depending on your needs. For further information on these please refer to the articles listed under the references section.

14 Additional notes We recommend that you deploy the application to a clean machine by copying it manually to ensure that regular deployment works prior to trying ClickOnce. ClickOnce is supported on Firefox using a plugin available for download from References Windows Forms 2.0 Programming by Chris Sells and Michael Weinhardt. o Chapter 19 ClickOnce deployment is invaluable. Authenticode - Questions / Comments? Please send us your feedback by sending an to support@syncfusion.com. We love to hear from you. The Syncfusion Essential Studio Team