After certificate update for signing ClickOnce application, ApplicationDeployment.CurrentDeployment.IsFirstRun is false

Christian Obkircher 6

Since our certificate for signing our ClickOnce application expired recently, we rolled out a new one before deploying the next update of the application.

The update worked fine, but our release notes weren't shown, as ApplicationDeployment.CurrentDeployment.IsFirstRun was false. This was only the case for users who already had the application and performed an update. For fresh installs, IsFirstRun was true.

Is this by design? Is it a bug? Am I doing something wrong?

Jack J Jun 24,286 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2023-03-15T03:06:56.14+00:00

@Christian Obkircher, Welcome to Microsoft Q&A, based on your description, ApplicationDeployment.CurrentDeployment.IsFirstRun seems to be correct because the users who already had the application indeed not the first time this application has run on the client computer. Could you show some code example about your problem?
Christian Obkircher 6 Reputation points

2023-03-16T15:06:12.92+00:00
Thank you for your reply, @Jack J Jun

As I said, we also deployed a new version, and the affected users did perform an update. Of course, for these users it was not the first run the application ever ran, but according to the documentation of ApplicationDeployment.IsFirstRun:

The value of this property is reset whenever the user upgrades from one version to the next. If you want to perform an operation only the very first time any version of the application is run, you will need to perform an additional test [...]

And indeed, it has always worked as intended, except during the first update after changing the certificate.

There's nothing much to the code:

if (ApplicationDeployment.CurrentDeployment.IsFirstRun) ShowReleaseNotes(); else Log.Debug("Not the first run after update - skip showing release notes");

And indeed, we have seen the debug message, and the release notes have not been shown. Since we also log the current version on startup, we can confirm that this was actually the first run after the update.
Jack J Jun 24,286 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2023-03-17T07:57:50.9066667+00:00

@Christian Obkircher, thanks for the feedback, based on my test, when I update to the newer version app, ApplicationDeployment.CurrentDeployment.IsFirstRun will be true, which is the same as the doc said.

Then, I want to know if there are opened instances about the app, which may cause ApplicationDeployment.CurrentDeployment.IsFirstRun to be false.
Christian Obkircher 6 Reputation points

2023-03-17T10:39:09.92+00:00
No, there are no other instances. As I said, according to the logs, it was the first run of the version.

Note that the application is set to check for updates before application startup, and updates are required.

The steps to reproduce are:

generate certificate A and add it to trusted publishers store

publish app version 1.0 signed with certificate A

run the application (first install)

IsFirstRun is true

run the application again

IsFirstRun is false

publish app version 1.1 signed with certificate A

run the application

automatic update is performed before the application is run

when the application starts, IsFirstRun is true

genererate certificate B add it to trusted publishers store

publish app version 1.2 signed with certificate B

run the application

automatic update is performed before the application is run

when the application starts, IsFirstRun should be true again, but is actually false
Jack J Jun 24,286 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2023-03-24T14:43:06.9033333+00:00

@Christian Obkircher, thanks for the detailed steps, based on my test, I reproduced the same problem with you. Based on my search, I could not find the related doc to describe that IsfirstRun will be false when the certificate is updated. It may be an issue, I recommend that you could report the problem in GitHub.

Thanks for reporting the problem.