This post summarizes how one can build a ClickOnce package automatically in GitHub Actions with publishing to GitHub Pages.

Assuming you have a WPF application in a GitHub repository (see list of real examples using this method below).

  1. First, create publish profile for ClickOnce package locally in Visual Studio (see Microsoft docs). Right-click on your project, select Publish and ClickOnce. Leave default options, but set “Install location” as “From a web site”, and specify the URL as:

    https://{user}.github.io/{repo}/

    replacing {user} with your GitHub username and {repo} with the repository name.

    This should create file Properties/PublishProfiles/ClickOnceProfile.pubxml. Check it into your repository and publish to your main branch, it will be needed by the build script below.

    You don’t need to click “Publish”, pushing the publish profile (.pubxml) file is enough.

  2. Create an empty branch gh-pages and push it to GitHub:

    git switch --orphan gh-pages
git commit --allow-empty -m "Initial commit"
git push -u origin gh-pages

  3. Enable GitHub Pages on your repository (in Settings > Pages) and configure them to publish from gh-pages branch (set folder to root /).

  4. In your gh-pages branch, add .gitattributes with the following content:

    * -text

    to prevent Git from messing with line endings in your release files.

    Also add an empty .nojekyll file to prevent GitHub from processing your release files before publishing them.

  5. In your main branch, create release.ps1 script as below (don’t forget to change the two properties at the beginning marked with “👈”). Optionally, you can embed this code directly into the GitHub Action in the next step, but then you won’t be able to run the release locally which might be useful (you can run ./release.ps1 -OnlyBuild from PowerShell on your machine to perform only the build step without publishing to GitHub pages).

    # From https://janjones.me/posts/clickonce-installer-build-publish-github/.

[CmdletBinding(PositionalBinding=$false)]
param (
    [switch]$OnlyBuild=$false
)

$appName = "WpfApplication" # 👈 Replace with your application project name.
$projDir = "WpfApplication" # 👈 Replace with your project directory (where .csproj resides).

Set-StrictMode -version 2.0
$ErrorActionPreference = "Stop"

Write-Output "Working directory: $pwd"

# Find MSBuild.
$msBuildPath = & "${env:ProgramFiles(x86)}\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vswhere.exe" `
    -latest -requires Microsoft.Component.MSBuild -find MSBuild\**\Bin\MSBuild.exe `
    -prerelease | select-object -first 1
Write-Output "MSBuild: $((Get-Command $msBuildPath).Path)"

# Load current Git tag.
$tag = $(git describe --tags)
Write-Output "Tag: $tag"

# Parse tag into a three-number version.
$version = $tag.Split('-')[0].TrimStart('v')
$version = "$version.0"
Write-Output "Version: $version"

# Clean output directory.
$publishDir = "bin/publish"
$outDir = "$projDir/$publishDir"
if (Test-Path $outDir) {
    Remove-Item -Path $outDir -Recurse
}

# Publish the application.
Push-Location $projDir
try {
    Write-Output "Restoring:"
    dotnet restore -r win-x64
    Write-Output "Publishing:"
    $msBuildVerbosityArg = "/v:m"
    if ($env:CI) {
        $msBuildVerbosityArg = ""
    }
    & $msBuildPath /target:publish /p:PublishProfile=ClickOnceProfile `
        /p:ApplicationVersion=$version /p:Configuration=Release `
        /p:PublishDir=$publishDir /p:PublishUrl=$publishDir `
        $msBuildVerbosityArg

    # Measure publish size.
    $publishSize = (Get-ChildItem -Path "$publishDir/Application Files" -Recurse |
        Measure-Object -Property Length -Sum).Sum / 1Mb
    Write-Output ("Published size: {0:N2} MB" -f $publishSize)
}
finally {
    Pop-Location
}

if ($OnlyBuild) {
    Write-Output "Build finished."
    exit
}

# Clone `gh-pages` branch.
$ghPagesDir = "gh-pages"
if (-Not (Test-Path $ghPagesDir)) {
    git clone $(git config --get remote.origin.url) -b gh-pages `
        --depth 1 --single-branch $ghPagesDir
}

Push-Location $ghPagesDir
try {
    # Remove previous application files.
    Write-Output "Removing previous files..."
    if (Test-Path "Application Files") {
        Remove-Item -Path "Application Files" -Recurse
    }
    if (Test-Path "$appName.application") {
        Remove-Item -Path "$appName.application"
    }

    # Copy new application files.
    Write-Output "Copying new files..."
    Copy-Item -Path "../$outDir/Application Files","../$outDir/$appName.application" `
        -Destination . -Recurse

    # Stage and commit.
    Write-Output "Staging..."
    git add -A
    Write-Output "Committing..."
    git commit -m "Update to v$version"

    # Push.
    git push
} finally {
    Pop-Location
}

  6. Again in your main branch, create a GitHub Action workflow file .github/workflows/release.yml:

    name: Release

on:
  push:
    tags: [v*]

jobs:
  release:
    runs-on: windows-latest

    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v3

      - name: Setup Git
        run: |
          git config --global url."https://user:${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}@github".insteadOf https://github
          git config --global user.name github-actions
          git config --global user.email github-actions@github.com          

      - name: Run release script
        shell: pwsh
        run: ./release.ps1

  7. This will run whenever you publish a release using the GitHub UI or manually push a tag (which is what publishing the release does under the hood):

    git tag v1.0.0
git push origin v1.0.0

    Note that the script expects the tag to be specified with prefix v.

    When the workflow runs, it builds your app, creates a ClickOnce package, and pushes it to the gh-pages branch, so it’s available for download at the URL you specified in step 1 as file {app}.application where {app} is the name of your application project:

    https://{user}.github.io/{repo}/{app}.application

    Beware that the URL is case sensitive (so if the app name is WpfApplication, the URL could be https://jjonescz.github.io/wpf-example/WpfApplication.application).

    Now you can provide that URL to your users and let the ClickOnce magic happen. Whenever you publish a new version of the app, it will be automatically downloaded to your users when they open the app (and have an Internet connection).

Real-world examples

These are real-world examples of .NET applications published using the above method:

  • InOculus: Minimal desktop timer to remind you to get up and relieve eyestrain
Let me know what you think and feel free to ask questions about this post in comments below.