Publish C# clickonce application using multiple .sln solutions

Question

I have two C# solutions:

• one for the core of an application with an .exe and a .dll file
• the other with extensions methods/additional utilities and functions which produces a .dll file that can be consumed by the .exe in the first application. This second solution .dll depends on the .dll in the first solution.

I would like to publish the two (or, in general, multiple such solutions) via the same clickonce application.

Can this be achieved by setting a common publish output directory for both solutions? In all, the first solution is the one that always gets built first, while the second is to follow, so there should not be any incoherencies.

Answer 1

Can this be achieved by setting a common publish output directory for both solutions?

No, it cannot. Setting the publish path will publish that assembly and it's dependencies as a single ClickOnce application. If you publish two different solutions then you will be publishing two different ClickOnce applications, each with their own manifest files.

There is fundamentally no reason for you to maintain this as two separate solutions - just merge the projects together into a single solution.