Improve update detection for .NET (Core) applications deployed with ClickOnce

[NikolaMilosavljevic]

.NET (Core) applications deployed with ClickOnce cannot use ApplicationDeployment class for on-demand update check.

Besides checking for new updates, this check can be used to ensure that the deployment is still available on the server and wasn't deleted. If application is doing silent updates, without this check, user won't be aware that application is not getting any updates.

Launcher could do the update check if application is configured to install new updates automatically. We need to find a way to communicate the result of this check to .NET (Core) application. We could potentially also include the result of any recent automatic update.

[Rmurray0809]

Would there be any reason ClickOnce couldn't just drop a JSON file with information into the application directory when it is started? It seems like this would allow an easy way for the application find out information about the install (ie put the version thats on the server, the install URL etc). It could have extra information in it that would allow the developer to take action based on the information (exceptions?). This would also make it fairly extensible so if someone wanted to add information in the future they could and generally applications will just continue to work.

[NikolaMilosavljevic]

@Rmurray0809 yes, a similar approach is considered - we'll have more details on the design soon.

[TimKras]

Any updates about this?

[NikolaMilosavljevic]

@TimKras thank you for the interest in this feature. We don't have an estimate, yet, when it would be available as a preview.

cc @dleeapho

[derskythe]

For those people who want to use ClickOnce on .NET 5 and want silently update, I wrote a small wrapper that implements some of the ApplicationDeployment properties:

• CurrentVersion
• ServerVersion
• UpdateAvailable
• Update
• IsNetworkDeployment
• DataDir

Hope this helps someone: https://github.com/derskythe/WpfSettings