Question

Our company uses ClickOnce to internally deploy our main application (AppA). I’m in the process of writing a helper application (AppB) that, ideally, would be started via AppA. We were planning on including AppB in AppA’s solution, then adding a reference to AppB.

Is there any way to actually do something like Process.Start by calling AppB.Program.Main()?

Then, to add a level of complexity, how does this factor in with the ClickOnce deployment of AppA?

Any insight to point me in the correct direction would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I found the solution for us was to see if they had already installed AppB by looking for the .appref-ms ‘shortcut’ in the Start Menu. If they had it, do a Process.Start(). If not, send them to the Installation URL.

Private Sub LoadAppBFromClickOnce()
    Dim argsToPass As String = "?arg1=1"

    Dim s As String = Path.Combine(Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.Programs), "CompanyName", "AppB.appref-ms")
    If File.Exists(s) Then
        Try
            Process.Start(s, argsToPass)
        Catch ex As Exception
            Throw ex
        End Try
    Else
        MessageBox.Show(String.Format("AppB is not installed.  Please install from {0}.", APPB_INSTALL_URL), "Error", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error)
        Process.Start("iexplore.exe", APPB_INSTALL_URL)
    End If
End Sub