While continuing my research and learning of ClickOnce deployment, I came across a very interesting page that explains Click Once Deployment Architecture. The article describes how a ClickOnce installation is physically installed on a client computer.
Application Publication
Each application publication has:
- A deployment manifest – A deployment manifest is an XML file that describes a ClickOnce deployment, including the identification of the current ClickOnce application version to deploy.
- An application manifest – An application manifest is an XML file that describes an application that is deployed using ClickOnce.
- All of the application files for that version.
The client computer must have the .NET framework 2.0 or later installed in order to do a ClickOnce deployment to that computer. The .NET framework can be deployed in a variety of ways including the ClickOnce Bootstrapper.