[evanw]

I'm interested to see how the community responds to their choice of ClickOnce as the deployment method.

I use ClickOnce for several of my applications, and I'd say the users who dislike it the most have the highest technical aptitude (which, I'd guess, is a large part of GitHub's user base).

[jamesgeck0]

I like ClickOnce just because it has a built-in update method that doesn't necessarily require downloading the entire application installer all over again. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms404267.aspx

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an obvious way to mass update ClickOnce applications apt-get style.

[jamesgeck0]

Of course, GH4W's first update _would_ downloaded the entire ~26mb package. I set myself up for that.

[Encosia]

As a technical type, I don't mind ClickOnce. Chrome is another good example of a successful ClickOnce application that a lot of technically savvy types use.

I think maybe ClickOnce's drawbacks are less of a sticking point when the application you're installing is one that needs Internet connectivity to be fully functional anyway.

[statictype]

shrug - Honestly, I thought the same thing - and then I only realized GitHub was a ClickOnce app after poking around at the shortcut it created on the Desktop. The installation was pretty seamless.

[Splines]

Interesting. What's the usual cause for complaint?

[evanw]

The most common questions/complaints I get are:

- Why can't I find the installation directory? (ClickOnce doesn't use the standard C:/Program Files/ location, it stores program files in C:/Users/<your username>/AppData/Local/Apps/2.0 for security reasons.)

- Why does the installer need a network connection? (ClickOnce downloads the required setup files from the internet.)

The lack of a standard Program Files/.exe deployment also makes it difficult to map filetype associations, which is also a frequent complaint.

I'll likely be going with non-ClickOnce deployments for the future. ClickOnce is great for deploying production software at work, but for a consumer audience, it isn't quite perfect.

(Personally, I really like ClickOnce.)

[HarshaThota]

Don't know if it's mature enough but have you looked at NSync (https://github.com/xpaulbettsx/NSync)?

Considering that Paul has been working on it and yet choose to go with ClickOnce, I am guessing it's not ready for prime time but it might be worth looking into anyway.

[xpaulbettsx]

NSync isn't finished yet - ClickOnce is 95% of what we want but has some pretty damning flaws (tells people randomly that an app is "Unknown Publisher", certs expire after one year and now people have to uninstall/reinstall, proxy server problems, etc).

NSync is my ongoing (not finished yet!) project to recreate ClickOnce

[HarshaThota]

I figured that was the case.

How much of an overlap do NSync and NAppUpdate (https://github.com/synhershko/NAppUpdate) share? Would love to see some type of collaboration between the two.

BTW is there a way to submit tickets other than email for GitHub for Windows? Maybe a GitHub repo? Would make it rather easy to submit and track issues while also limiting the number of duplicates.

[xpaulbettsx]

NSync has a somewhat novel mechanism of delivering updates (via repurposed NuGet packages) that would be difficult to shoehorn into NAppUpdate or other frameworks

[evanw]

Yes I've been keeping a close eye on this project. Based off the readme, it sounds exactly like what I'm looking for. You make a good point though, as it was authored by the same user but ClickOnce was chosen instead.

[est]

I fucking hate ClickOnce. The crappy downloader fails all the time. Not all places have a good QoS connection like North America. HTTP download can be restarted and resumed at anytime.

[fmystic]

You can set up file associations in the deployment configuration though, right?

[evanw]

Yes and it's actually really easy to do, it's built right into Visual Studio. The downsides are that you can't really do anything with it after you've set them (like at application runtime), the associations don't always work for some reason, and if the associations get changed by other applications you can't reset them unless the user re-runs the installer.

[Karunamon]

Another one I can add is that certain security packages (coughSEPcough) can do weird things to the SXS repos that ClickOnce relies on. This will lead to applications failing to install with pretty much useless error messages.

Granted, this 60/40 blame security software/clickonce, but it was a complaint nonetheless.