Are roaming user settings saved per client assembly version?

Question

Currently our customer is rolling out a new Citrix environment and they are experiencing some client (WinForms) troubles with user settings. I will have to look at their Roaming User Profiles configuration (http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/provisioning-61/pvs-network-profiles-roaming-manage.html), but I wondered...

In a normal .NET project, you can create user settings that roam with the application. This means that a user.config is created in the %AppData% folder of your computer. I just checked my own computer and saw several folders for our WinForms client. Each folder contained one folder with the assembly version for that specific client with subsequently an user.config file. Now my questions:

• Does each client with a different assembly version create a separate roaming folder?
• If so, does this mean that installing a new version on the Citrix environment cause our old WinForms client settings to be unusable for the new version? (i.e. settings of version 4.2.6 are not used in 4.2.7 because they are not the same version.)

Answer 1

First of, I don't know if citrix adds to this issue.

However, WinForms applications store their settings specific to the version of the application. If you increase the version number of your application you also must migrate/update your settings:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.configuration.localfilesettingsprovider.upgrade%28v=vs.110%29.aspx

Especially have a look at the remarks section. This applies to local and roaming settings.

Maybe this article can help you:

http://www.ngpixel.com/2011/05/05/c-keep-user-settings-between-versions/