Chapter 17. Deploying Windows Applications
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER
An overview of deployment options
How to deploy a Windows application with ClickOnce
How to create a Windows Installer deployment package
How to install an application with Windows Installer
There are several ways to install Windows applications. Simple applications can be installed with a basic xcopy deployment, but for installation to hundreds of clients, an xcopy deployment is not really useful. For that situation, you have two options: ClickOnce deployment or the Microsoft Windows Installer.
With ClickOnce deployment, the application is installed by clicking a link to a website. In situations where the user should select a directory in which to install the application, or when some registry entries are required, the Windows Installer is the deployment option to use.
This chapter covers both options for installing Windows applications.
DEPLOYMENT OVERVIEW
Deployment is the process of installing applications to the target systems. Traditionally, such an installation has been done by invoking a setup program. If one hundred or even one thousand clients must be installed, the installation can be very time-consuming. To alleviate this, the system administrator can create batch scripts to automate this activity. However, it still requires a lot of work to set up and support different client PCs and different versions of the operating system.
Because of these challenges, many companies have converted their intranet ...
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