How create certificate in VS2008?

[Ronald S. Cook]

I'm so annoyed in Visual Studio when I go to publish a Win app, the dang
"Sign the ClickOnce manifest" checkbox is always checked (I uncheck it each
time before I publish).

I heard that in VS2008 there is an easier way to create some sort of custom
certificate and be done with it (like to company name and 2999 for a date or
something).

This app is within our intranet so security is not a concern. I just want
something simple so the nuisance of the prompt goes away.

Anybody know how to do this?

Thanks.

 

[Jeff Winn]

Certificates are a bit of a pain, especially ones that you're creating
yourself. In order for the certificate to be trusted it needs to be
originated by a trusted source, or installed to the trusted certificates on
the local machine. That's where the problems come in at. If you're looking
at 1 machine it's not a big deal, if you're dealing with thousands of
computers then it becomes a problem.

I'm definitely not an expert on certificates, but hopefully I can give you
some general direction where to go.

What you can do is create a certificate and install that certificate into
the trusted certificates on the local machine. That certificate will act as
your root certificate for any other certificates you'll be using (including
the one you wanted for clickonce). As long as that root certificate gets
installed on all the target machines within your organization, all the
certificates that get generated by it will be accepted everywhere. Typically
if you're using some type of imaging software to create images of computers
during deployment the cert would be installed on the root of your pc image,
so any computers that get deployed to users would automatically trust the
certificate.

Here's a good link I was reading the other day, just disregard the stuff
about WCF. What you'll be interested in is how to actually make and install
the certificates.

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WCF/WCFSSL.aspx

Hope that helps. Good luck with your project (I have a feeling you're going
to need it)!

- Jeff