As Microsoft said clickonce is only attend to support light application - recommended.
Why Microsoft doesn't write it on clickonce abstraction page i know, but, in case you have such big application and you would like to give the user the feeling of web application , so maintenance will more easy, updating and versioning will be support on ease way (almost automatically), SE demand for web application but you have only winform application so click once is the result.
Where is the catch,
Registry, in case your application write to registry or you use file extension then you need to support it on other way, think using files as URL and file extension will be dropped.
Why ? Because registry demand for admin privilege, most of the cases the user is user and not admin, speak on maintenance !.
Shortcut, Forget on customize the shortcut.
You can customize but uninstall the application will not remove the zombie customized shortcut's.
Command line, Supports only with online strategy, forget from being offline and using the query string, why Microsoft does it to us ? why ? there is no technology limit why it does no support but there is no way how to do that so offline will be run with query string, note the only the app ref file can run the application in offline mode.
What to do,
- Do not use registry at all (clickonce mode), in case you need the application tun also part of clickonce and as common application (winform + msi), so support registration by XML files.
- Use shared directory Locate it under user application data (do not use the roaming user application data folder), use the application setting base architecture and provide provider which will read and write from the customize shared place.
- In case your application need to support run files (accordance the application spec), then a url refer to shared resources (not part the clickonce deployment) with url to the application can replace the file extension use (in some cases).
Bye.
