Publishing desktop apps
ClickOnce is the technology used in VS 2022 to create installers for your desktop applications in a simplified way. This technology allows developers to publish and update their applications from a server or a shared network location so that application users can download, update, and install the app with just a couple of clicks.
For this demonstration, I have created a Widows Presentation Foundation (WPF) application named Chapter8_Code_WPF
replicating the game Tic Tac Toe, which you can find in the download link in the Technical requirements section.
Once you have opened the project, you can run it, review the source code, or debug it, whatever you want to do. Then, go to the Solution Explorer and right-click on the project name (in our case Chapter8_Code_WPF) then Publish…, which will open a publishing wizard.
Figure 8.22 – The "Publish…" option to start the ClickOnce wizard
In this wizard...