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what are the ways to publish desktop applications on AZURE

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Wednesday, December 11, 2019 12:13 PM | 1 vote

I have 3 desktop applications and i want to publish it on azure server. so i can download and install from azure server.

All replies (8)

Wednesday, December 11, 2019 2:14 PM | 2 votes

You need to create Microsoft Azure Storage Account
and install Microsoft Storage Explorer
After creating storage account, please create a container. you will get URL of container
Once done, Go to your VS solution, right click and publish it by selecting a local folder like c:\code to dump the executable,
Click Next-
You will get an option as How will User install the application?
Paste the URL of your container.
Then, use Microsoft Storage Explorer to upload both folder and files to the container.

Monday, December 16, 2019 11:54 AM

Hello @Phusonu, 

Thanks for reaching out to us. 

I am following up on this to see if the solution provided by @Aakash.verma was helpful?

Please feel free to reach back out to us if you need any further help regarding this matter. 

Thanks. 

Monday, December 16, 2019 5:29 PM | 1 vote

Hi Aakash, the mentioned approach is great!! but do we have any way to publish the folder and files directly to Azure Blob Container using FTP and Clickonce

Many Thanks.

 

Monday, December 16, 2019 5:56 PM | 1 vote

Hello Phusonu, 

Please go through this document for more info which will guide you through hosting a ClickOnce deployment in Azure Blob Storage. 

Summarizing the same from the doc so it can be beneficial for the community members :  

  • Create a container in blob storage for your ClickOnce deployment. You’ll need the container name when setting your url. You can select ‘clickoncetest’. The only characters allowed are lower case letter, numbers, and the hyphen (-).
  • In your project properties, set your Publishing Folder Location to somewhere on your local drive. Set the Installation Folder URL to the URL that will point to the container in blob storage that is going to host your deployment.
  • Publish your application. Then go to the local folder and copy the files and folders up to the container in blob storage. When you are finished, in the root of that container you should have the deployment manifest (yourapp.application file) and the bootstrapper (setup.exe) (and publish.htm if you included it). You should also have a folder called “Application Files”.
  • In “Application Files”, you should see the ‘versioned folders’ that contain the assemblies for each version of your application that you have published.
  • When doing updates, you need to upload the versioned folder for the new update, and replace the files in the root folder (yourapp.application, setup.exe, and publish.htm).
  • If you have any problems, you can check the MIME types on the published files and make sure they are right. These can be changed for each file if needed. With ClickOnce deployments, you should definitely be using the option that appends .deploy to all of your assemblies, so you should not have any files with unknown extensions. If you want to double-check, the MIME types for a ClickOnce deployment are explained here.
  • Remember that with Blob Storage, it is not going to be storing the files that is going to be the biggest cost factor, it is going to be the transfer of the files to and from the client.

I hope this information helps. 

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Tuesday, December 17, 2019 9:15 AM

Hi Monika, your answer seems helpful but i don't want to create a local folder for deployment.I just want to publish directly to Blob Container without doing copy and paste/upload from local folder.   

Thursday, December 19, 2019 4:15 PM

Hello Phusonu,

Sorry for the delay here. 

I suspect that there is an option available for publishing directly to Blob Container. But I am trying to reach out to Internal Product team here to see if there are any other alternatives available here. Once I find any information, I will post any findings here. Meanwhile, please go through the below articles and see if it helps. 

Please see this doc for more reference, there are couple of options to automate here : Deploy Click Once Application on Azure Blob Container

Also please take a moment to look at this thread

I hope this information helps. 

Friday, December 20, 2019 4:54 PM

Hello Monika,

Thanks for helping us, But I have automated this earlier. I need something that can publish my app directly to blob storage using a link(FTP Link In Click Once) only. 

Wednesday, March 25, 2020 5:15 AM

Aakash,

Your solution worked for me. Now I have the ClickOnce Publish folder on my Azure Blob Container.

But what URL should a user use to install the app. For example, when you publish an app to a website using Visual Studio, it creates a publish.html page whose URL a user can use to install the app. But here we don't have that publish.html page. So, what we do in that case? Thanks..Nam