Ok, I noticed a few other little things about the publishing process through Visual Studio 2005, related to Beta 2. So, in an effort to save you all the 45 minutes I wasted on some of these things, here's the list. Luckily, I was somewhat aprised of this before I did my presentation yesterday, however, it still ate up some demo time given that things didn't always work the first time...

1. Publishing will continue even if you can't successfully build (see my previous post), so I recommend you always try to build first and watch your output. I know what you are thinking: “Oh, I'll just publish and check the output window for errors before I run the app”. But, I guarantee you will be sometimes seduced by that little browser window with the “Install” button...and you'll forget...and you'll find a bug...and you'll try to think about what the problem is but really you didn't get the latest assembly (or, worse, the assembly you're referencing never was built).

2. The “Properties” tab doesn't appear to be saved as part of the build step. So, if you make changes they won't be reflected when you publish...another ghost. The problem is, it still increments the published version, so you “think“ you have it.

3. Sometimes, not always, if you don't version your assemblies, the updated code is not deployed with the newly published version. This problem seems strange to me, since the published application version has been incremented...however I haven't had time yet to inspect what the cause of this is, in terms of the server deployment and its files.

If I see any more problems, or find a solution for these issues...I'll update this post. Feel free to comment if you find it before I do, I'm about to bury myself in ASP.NET 2.0 and Indigo for the next few weeks, I won't have much time for ClickOnce...