Visual Studio 2008 C#: Auto-Increment Version numbers

Question

From what I'm seeing online, it seems the only thing in VS that auto-increments the Version numbers is if it's a website. For applications, it seems you either manually have to do it or you have to have a post build event and call a function or small app to do it for you. But, that's only what I'm seeing when I google it and when I've tried messing around with it myself. My questions are:

1. Can an application auto-increment the version number on a successful build without having to do the afore mentioned? Like a checkbox hidden deep in VS or something?
2. If no, is there a way to Publish an application rather than it being published as a website?
3. If it can, is that even the write way to go?

I know I've seen some instances where you can use the install package to increment the number, but my boss would like to start seeing how many times we build the applications so he can show to our customer the work being put into the application. If anyone can help me, that'd be great. Hope you all are having a good day. Thanks.

Answer 1

my boss would like to start seeing how many times we build the applications so he can show to our customer the work being put into the application.

Why not just publish your change logs and/or bug/feature database?