单击一次或 MSI 安装

Question

I have an Excel add-in that was working fine. Now my company made changes to the Trust Center and what they will allow. They gave me the following options:

I can self-sign a certificate or install the add-in in a specific directory that is trusted. Given these options, here are my questions:

1. If I use a self-signed certificate don't I need to manually install it on each user's machine?
2. If I use an MSI Install package, I can then designate which directory the add-in is installed, but then don't I lose the ability for automatic updates to the add-in?

What do you think are my best options and/or are there any other options?

Thank you.

Answer 1

If I use a self-signed certificate don't I need to manually install it on each user's machine?

Yes. Anything signed by that certificate will not have a valid signature unless the certificate is in the trust store. If you have some kind of PKI infrastructure at your company, like ADCS, you can probably get a code signing certificate from them (assuming that the place you want to use the VSTO add on trusts the authority's root).

If I use an MSI Install package, I can then designate which directory the add-in is installed, but then don't I lose the ability for automatic updates to the add-in?

ClickOnce has an auto-updating functionality, but I've never used it with VSTO, so that might work. An MSI by itself is not going to automatically update your installation, but there are plenty of frameworks to make that easier, like Squirrel .

Answer 2

With regards to a self-signed cert, yes you'll have to install it on everyone's system.
You can use a Group Policy in Active Directory to push out your cert. See link below from Microsoft: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc782744(v=ws.10).aspx

As for the automatic updates with an MSI package it is definitely possible, it won't be the same as how ClickOnce publishes it and bundles it from within VS.

As an alternative to ClickOnce, you can use DDayUpdate and then package it using InnoSetup.

DDayUpdate: http://www.ddaysoftware.com/Pages/Projects/DDay.Update/
InnoSetup: http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php

Answer 3

1. Yes, when using the click-once setup you will need to install it separately for each user (on the same machine/ separate machines)
2. using the msi the users will have to uninstall and reinstall the add-in everytime there is an update.