Visual Studio: Create self-signed certificate for ClickOnce (.pfx)

When you want to create a ClickOnce deployment you should sign the automatically generated manifest using an Authenticode certificate, providing a certificate took from the local computer cert store or passing a .pfx file.

To create an homemade self-signed .pfx file (for testing purpose only!!!), open the “Visual Studio Command Promt (2010)” or the “Developer Command Prompt for VS2012” and run the following two steps:

makecert.exe -sv TestCodeSign.pvk -n “CN=Test Code Sign” TestCodeSign.cer

pvk2pfx.exe -pvk TestCodeSign.pvk -spc TestCodeSign.cer -pfx TestCodeSign.pfx -po password

If you want, you can also omit the password.

Now that you have your own homemade certificate you can use it, especially useful while using command-line tools like mage (or mageUI with GUI support).

Stay Tuned! 😉

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