Generally, ClickOnce is used when centralized deployment or execution of applications are required. ClickOnce deployments are auto-updating and do not require users to have administrative access on their computers. ClickOnce does nothing application-specific with the registry or the desktop, and really only installs (and uninstalls) Start Menu shortcuts and files related to the application.
ClickOnce packages are created with the Visual Studio Publish wizard to publish an application project to a website or network file share. A new project is not created and the options used to publish are stored with the project that is being published. Settings for ClickOnce deployment can be found in the Publish tab of most Visual Studio application projects, where options such as Application Files, Prerequisites, whether the application automatically checks for updates, and other options can be fine tuned from the detected defaults.
Context: When publishing an application to a centralized...