April 2007 Update: Note that Service Pack 1 of VS2005 fixes the application icon problem and the MageUI bug listed in this post. See this newer blog post for details.
Seriously, 15 16 manual steps when I am doing a manual deployment rather than using the VS2005 Publish Wizard (which is not an option for my deployment scenario). If I forget one, I have to start all over again. I've done it often enough now that it's not a huge challenge, but once in a while, I'll forget a step which messes up the update.
- Change the version number in AssemblyInfo
- Copy the web server's current deployment folder to a new one, renaming the new one with the next version #
- Copy the new or changed files for the application into this new folder. As I'm doing this by VPN, I choose this method, rather than building the manifests locally and copying the entire contents of the folder up to the server which sometimes takes longer than coding the modification that required the update.
- Open up the app manifest in MAGEUI
- Update the files (if I am replacing any files, this always crashes on the first run and I have to do it a second time)
- Open up the app manifest in MAGEUI again
- Update the files again (it always completes on this second attempt)
- Change the version number
- Close the manifest
- Open the manifest in Notepad and add my icon reference. (This uses my icon for the shortcut and during installation. See my previous post for more info.)
- Open the manifest again in MAGEUI
- Save & Sign it
- Open the deployment manifest in MAGEUI
- Change the version number
- Change the reference to the new app manifest
- Save and sign
Phew.
It's easy enough to forget one of those steps and have to start all over again.
Hopefully, the MAGEUI tool will get it's own update and fix the crash (-2 steps) and give me a way to assign my icon (-2 steps). Otherwise, I'll have to go to the command line MAGE and script the whole process for myself.
Regarding Step #1, for the application's “About” window, I can pick up the manifest version with System.Deployment.Application.ApplicationDeployment.CurrentVersion. But I still like to have have the assembly know the version, which may be completely unnecessary with ClickOnce. I suppose I should figure that one out!