How do I deploy two ClickOnce versions simultaneou

Question

I would like the ability to have a test ClickOnce server for my applications where users can run both the production version and the test version in parallel. Is this possible?

I first tried using the following in AssemblyInfo.cs and also changing the name in the ClickOnce deployment though all this achieved was overwriting the users' production version with the test version. Likewise, it did the same when they went back to the production server.

#if DEBUG
[assembly: AssemblyTitle("Product Name - Test")]
#else
[assembly: AssemblyTitle("Product Name")]
#endif

I thought I should also clarify that the two deployment locations are different from one another and on different servers.

UPDATE

I've also tried setting the GUID for the manifest depending on the debug mode, but again it does not work (dummy GUID's used below).

#if DEBUG
[assembly: Guid("AAAAAAAA-AAAA-AAAA-AAAA-AAAAAAAAAAAA")]
#else
[assembly: Guid("BBBBBBBB-BBBB-BBBB-BBBB-BBBBBBBBBBBB")]
#endif

How are the two distinguished? It seems that the installer sees them as two separate programs as I get a confirmation of installation for each. Though, when I install the second one, "Add/Remove Programs" only sees the latter, though the former is still on disk, as when I go to reinstall it later, it just simply runs, but then the add/remove programs switches back to the former name.

Answer 1

I do that all the time. I even have a screen in my application that changes which version a specific user will get. And I'm not doing anything tricky on the app side, all the magic is on the web server hosting the ClickOnce files.

Take a look at the article my buddy wrote, Fine Grained Versioning with ClickOnce . It explains how we did it.