Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate and Clickonce & Setup projects

Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate (RC) supports creating custom setups and Clickonce deployments.  Refer to https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wx3b589t.aspx for more information about Setup projects and ClickOnce deployments.

Using Clickonce/setup projects, there is easy built in support to chain install .NET Framework 4 and .NET Framework 4 Client Profile with your application. Refer to https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/7tx0bw8y.aspx for more information on using 'prerequisites dialog box' to choose appropriate options to chain install .NET Framework.

Note that with Visual Studio 2010 RC, .NET Framework 4 redistributable packages are released. The web bootstrapper packages for .NET Framework 4 will be released with the final release. Due to this, when you select .NET Framework 4 prerequisite in Setup Projects/Clickonce, "Download prerequisites from the component vendor's web site" option is not available for RC release. This option will be available in final release of Visual Studio 2010.

Note that if you choose this option, Visual Studio will fall back to "Download prerequisites from the same location as my application" option. You would also see a build warning - " The value of the 'Public Key' attribute....". The workaround is to select "Download prerequisites from the same location as my application" radio button from the prerequisites dialog box. This would mean that you would need to include .NET Framework 4 redistributable package along with the setup.exe or clickonce package.

Let me know if you have any questions.

I hope you are enjoying Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate!

-Varun