visual studio - Installation path of ClickOnce apps

Question

I have an application developed with Visual Studio 2008 and distributed throught ClickOnce.

My question: if I log on the client computer as John (for example) and I launch the setup.exe (provided through ClickOnce) to install the application, I noticed the path of the executable is something like: C:UsersJohnAppDataLocalApps2.0....mysoftware.exe

Now, if I log on as Mike, the path of the executable is something like: C:UsersMikeAppDataLocalApps2.0....mysoftware.exe

It seems that there is a different copy of each executable installation for each user. Does it make sence? Before I developed Visual Basic 6 application where executables are located in C:Program FilesMySoftwareMySoftware.exe. Every user was running the same executable.

Answer 1

Yes, ClickOnce always installs apps to an obfuscated folder in the user's profile. It's for security reasons. Users with limited privileges can't write to the "Program Files" folder but they can write to their profile.

This is something that everyone is turned off by initially because it's different. However, the only real cause for concern is if your app is massive and your users have very slow connections. If you still hate the idea of each user installing it, you'll have to use something else; there's no way make ClickOnce behave differently.