CodePlex ClickOnce publishing from directly within Visual Studio

Sunday, August 22, 2010

CodePlex ClickOnce publishing from directly within Visual Studio

Visual Studio Gallery - CodePlex publishing plugin

“This extension adds a toolbar to VS, that is similar to the Web Deployment toolbar. It allows you to set up a profile (you input your CodePlex username/password and a few other fields). Once that is set up, and your project is correctly set up for ClickOnce publishes, you can simply publish using the toolbar, instead of going to your project's web page, and creating a release there.

You also have the ability to replace an existing release: that is, if a release with the specified name already exists, the extension can simply edit its description, etc. and upload the new publish zipfile.

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CodePlex - CodePlex Publishing Plugin

“Project Description
This addin allows publishing your project directly from Visual Studio, this eliminating the unnecessary step of going to the CodePlex site to publish.

Currently allows publishing only ClickOnce releases to CodePlex, but I may be adding the ability to publish normal releases as well; will see how useful that option might be - after all, publishing ClickOnce releases is somewhat cumbersome, but normal releases are easy enough to do through the web interface.

The recommended for download release is a ClickOnce release, published using this plugin. You will download and install a sample application that shows the currently installed version of the plugin (N/A if you dont have it), and the available version. And gives you the ability to install the new version. Since it is a ClickOnce application, it will automatically ask you to update when you run in. A good test case/example, I think.

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I love developers. We can be the laziest bunch around, when we see something that’s a manual or slow operation and our first thought is, “I can automate that!”

This project is a perfect example of that. The current CodePlex ClickOnce publishing method is very manual and cumbersome. This Visual Studio plug makes it one click operation. Best of all the author has made the source available and also is eating his own dog food (i.e. using ClickOnce to publish his plugin installer).