I have Windows version of .NET Framework desktop application. Now I want to make version available for MacOS as well.
Is there any solution available using C#?
Will .NET Core work for both Windows and MacOs?
I have already build application using WinForms C#. I have created exe for window.. Similarly I want to run application on MacOS as well
You can try Mono then. It has (a rather limited) WinForms support. But if you never tested it on any other platforms yet, then be prepared for some issues. Among others:
You will not able to use any WinAPI directly (ie. extern methods to Win32 dlls)
You might expect some behavioral differences. Some of them affect only particular distributions.
Many of these can be handled by special handlings in you code, though. But it means you will need some IsWindowsdistinction here and there, just like in this project of mine.
And do not forget to install libgdiplus, which makes possible to use System.Drawing on non-Windows platforms, as WinForms is built on GDI+.
Related
I'm developing a desktop application with C# (.net 2.0 framework), I will compile it with Mono develop in windows and will change the GUI to GTK#,
What is the minimum requirement of frameworks must present in different platforms to execute this application.
In windows it is .Net 2.0 ,
what it is in linux , ubuntu centos etc...,
what it is in mac..?
Also it will be helpful to know the default version of framework existing in each platform.
Please send some helpful url or references.
Mono usually supports the same runtime version for all plattforms; that means if you target and develop against the .NET35 profile on say OS X, your Application will also run on Linux (and of course windows) with mono on that profile. Same holds true for the .NET 2.0 and 4.0 profiles. The .NET 2.0 is the one most complete and stable, but to my experience the .NET35 and .NET4 profiles are very usable, too; lot of .NET35 libraries compiled for Windows will just run out of the box on Linux and OS X if you use mono.
A word of warning: I've worked with Gtk (not restricted to Gtk#) on OS X and must say, you should avoid it. The gtk-quartz branch is not nearly as stable as its linux counterpart. There are several known issues that will reproducibly crash your application (i.e. there are issues with Drag'n'Drop), and some pieces are missing completely. Only using the X11 backend with gtk on OSX will yield satisfying results, but provide a very poor integration into the OS and user experience.
You might want to consider developing different GUI frontends for each OS: Gtk# on Linux, WPF on Windows, Cocoa via MonoMac, or take a look at the in-development Xwt framework.
I have a simple application made using C#.
Now how do I make it , such that it runs on all systems.
If a PC does not have .NET framework installed - it shouldsiliently install it with only the bare minimum requirements that the program needs.
Installing .NET framework - too big in size compared to many program , which is just a few kilobytes. Also is shoulf be silent and only if required.
Basically the application should be light and capable to run in all Windows systems.
Not interested in getting to Linux users.
Should I use Mono Project.
Else is there a way to get the bare minim .NET framework selectively pre-installed.
Please advise.
Thanks
Have a look at mkbundle. It will create a standalone executable, with no other dependencies. In particular it does not need neither the Mono runtime nor .NET to be installed in order to execute.
The size might still be a problem (it will likely be several megabytes, even compressed), so there is another tool to strip out everything you don't need from the assemblies: the monolinker.
Note that the size will likely not reach the kilobyte range even after doing all this.
You can do this with a lot of work and the help of the Mono framework. See Embedding Mono for more information.
All that considered, it would be much easier to use a boostrapper to get a version of the .NET Client Framework installed. But you're going to lose the ability to install silently or be in the "kilobytes" footprint.
Unfortunately you cant run a .NET program on a machine that does not have the .NET framework installed and the installer of the program could be made to download the framework automatically but not in .NET .
To run .net applications you need the .net framework installed, that should be either the full version or the limited client profile edition.
The easiest way is to create a setup project from VS and require the .net version you want... the installer should be able to install the .net framework from the internet so you are not required to ship it with the app, which you can do by the way from the installer.
Mono won't be different since it still needs to be installed on the system. Mono however has full AOT support, but I don't have any idea whether that would help you or not... it is still a huge overkill anyway.
If you need your app to be small and run on ANY windows without any dependencies, you should do in c/c++ or vb6 whose runtime ships with most windows versions.
I intend to learn C# and start coding Windows .exe applications, but the only thing that is holding me back is that not all potential users have the .NET framework installed and therefore would be unable to run my application.
Is there any way around it?
Thanks!
No. c# only target .NET (or a comparable framework, such as mono). As an aside, Win7 comes with .NET preinstalled, and I believe Vista did as well. There are also a ton of MS apps which require .NET. It's getting near ubiquitous on windows machines, so I wouldn't worry about it.
YES, there was XenoCode that can wrap everything that your app needs and runs it in as a standalone. I don't know what kind of dirty tricks they use, but there IS a way.
Now it's Spoon
From their site:
Spoon Studio
Easily virtualize all of your applications for instant,
zero-install delivery on Spoon Server and Spoon.net.
Spoon Studio lets you convert your existing software applications into virtual applications
that run with no installs, conflicts, or dependencies.
BTW, I'm in no way affiliated with them - just curious if the community will accept it or flame it.
Yes, with .NET Native.
Instead of compiling to intermediate language, it will compile to native code and run with statically linked .NET libraries. Therefore, there will be no .NET Runtime requirements for end users.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/dn642499.aspx
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn584397(v=vs.110).aspx
Does not work before Windows 10
C# is just a programming language. From a strictly technical point of view, someone could develop a C# compiler that targets the Windows API or <insert your target platform here> directly. Sure, it would be a lot of effort because C# was designed to fit .NET, which means the compiler writer would essentially have to re-implement .NET to provide all C# features.
From a practical point of view, you just want to use C# to target either .NET or Mono.
Microsoft started shipping .NET 2.0 with XP since 2005. So, even if your target machine was bought somewhere within the last 8 years, it should still have .NET.
If you are targetting the linux machines on the other hand, there is the mono framework available for that. You don't even have to include it, most repositories like ubuntu, debian, etc. has packages available for mono in their repositories. All you have to do is make your own package dependent on Mono runtime.
NO as simple as that
Everybody might say that it is already installed/ or you need the runtime. But that means YOU NEED IT
It's not about C#. It's about whether you want to develop managed or unmanaged applications. C# is the choice for developing managed applications which run on .NET Framework.
If you want to avoid it, you can go to Visual C++ (without .NET) development using Visual Studio
However, .NET framework comes pre-installed with latest Os like Win 7 these days.
Microsoft makes a redistributable installer that installs the version of .NET that you require. It bloats your install, but it's pretty much the only way to do what you need.
You'll need the .NET Runtime. However, most of the PCs running windows already have it.
Hey guys - I just wrote an app using c# and ready to deploy it. Never deployed a c# app before.
I deployed it and VC# outputted a .application file, application folder, and an installer. One of my users ran the installer (Windows 7) and was prompted to download/install the .net framework - which took upwards of 10 minutes. This is not acceptable for how simple my app is.
Moreover, I will need this app to be able to run on mac osx and linux if possible. Should I have wrote this in Java instead (poor planning on my part). What are my options?
C# is compiled to bytecode that runs on the CLR, the virtual machine that's at the core of the .NET framework. So yes, you need the .NET framework to run that.
Most current versions of Windows (XP, Vista, 7, etc.) come with some version of the .NET framework pre-installed, so your users don't have to download and install it. However, you might have used a version that's not already installed on the computers of (some of) your users.
For Linux and Mac OS X there is Mono, which is an open source implementation of .NET, but it does not contain everything that Microsoft's .NET contains, so your program might not work fully on Mono.
Using Java is not a real solution in the sense that your users would need to download and install the JRE (Java Runtime Environment) to run Java programs, very similar to the .NET framework. An advantage if you'd have used Java, is that Java is much more cross-platform compatible than .NET (Microsoft has no real interest in making .NET run on anything else than Windows).
.NET apps require the .NET framework. Java apps require the JRE. Your app is simple because .NET has done a lot of the work for you. A lot of companies write desktop apps in C++, but you will have to be mindful of cross-platform issues.
Yes, with any language that compiles to run on a managed runtime (.NET or Mono CLR, Java JVM) you will need to have that runtime installed. A C# application can compile to run on Windows on the .NET CLR, or on all the platforms you mention to run on the Mono runtime instead. Alternatively, a Java application would compile to run on the Java JRE, which is also compatible with all the platforms you mention.
So with either language there is potentially this extra installation overhead, and with either language you can achieve what you want.
You'll need to have .NET installed on your client's system in order to use your application.
As for running cross-platform - depending on how your Application is written, this can be simple or difficult.
You may want to look at Silverlight. This is directly supported on OS X and works on Linux via Moonlight.
Another alternative is to use Mono to run your .NET application on other platforms.
A C# app will need an implementation of the CLR (.NET) running on the local machine in order to run. A Java app will need an implementation of the JVM so it is really no different. On Windows, I would expect most people to have a .NET install.
Take a look at the Mono project as far as running it on Linux and Mac:
http://mono-project.com/Main_Page
One thing you can consider is using an older version of the .NET framework to ensure that the greatest number of people have it installed. I would use .NET 3.5 or even 2.0 if you do not need fancy new features. That would have been installed already on Windows 7 for example.
Since the Windows 7 user had to download the framework I assume you are currently targeting .NET 4 which means you must be using Visual Studio 2010 (or an express version). Here is a link that tells you how to target a different version of the framework:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb398202.aspx
One quick note about Mono, it is an excellent cross-platform option but it does not support the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) GUI framework at this point. You will either have to use Windows Forms or create different front-ends for different platforms.
If you want to create a Linux GUI (also available on Windows and Mac) you can try GTK#:
http://www.mono-project.com/GtkSharp
For a Mac native GUI you can check out MonoMac:
http://mjhutchinson.com/journal/2010/06/09/monomac_in_monodevelop
An excellent IDE for cross-platform .NET development is MonoDevelop (it will read your VC# project files):
http://monodevelop.com/
Like Java, .Net languages need a runtime installed. The full .Net framework is sometimes too big for small applications, so there is a smaller version of it call the compact framework with a smaller footprint that will install and download faster. You can read about it at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa497273.aspx. As noted by other answers most current versions of Windows come with various versions of .Net framework, so this installation may not be needed for every user.
As far as your cross platform needs go Mono allows for running .Net applications on Linux, I am not sure about running them on OSX. My assumption is you can not. Unfortunately your cross platform requirements made .Net a bad choice, and you should have gone with Java.
Other people gave you complicated answers. Well here's my simple answer. .NET framework is needed to run .NET applications and so do Java need JVM (as MCain said). Starting with Windows Vista, Microsoft includes .NET Framework built inside Windows. And in addition, .NET have versions, from 1.0 to 4.0. With Vista and Windows 7, .NET 3.5 is installed by default. I think your app is targeted for .NET 4.0 which is why a Windows 7 user needed to install .NET framework. For me, if I have to write a simple program, I'll use .NET 2.0 (later version = larger libraries, etc) so that my users (if they are Vista or Windows 7) don't have to install .NET again to run my software. You can choose which version of .NET you will target from New Project Window in Visual Studio.
You can change the target framework in the properties tab. If you start a project in VS2008 the default is .net 3.5 and for VS2010 it is .net 4.0. If you don't need the advanced features you can change your target back to 2.0 which should be available on most computers by now (I would guess far over 90%). Be sure to remove dependencies which are not available in 2.0 (like System.Linq, System.DataSet.Extensions) and the accociated imports (But the compiler will tell you what to do).
How to make pure native Exe for C#/VB.net Application? [After that No need .net framework to run that Exe]
Short answer: you can't.
Longer answer: there are programs which wrap the framework up, such as VMware ThinApp (previously known as Thinstall) - but they're still effectively using the framework, just in a different deployment form.
Even longer answer: Mono has an ahead-of-time compiler and bundler which allows it to create native apps (e.g. for the iPhone) - but I don't know what the state of play is with using that for Windows, and the normal caveats of compatibility between .NET and Mono apply.
Anything like this is likely to have significant implications if your application uses reflection, loads plug-ins etc. Personally I'd advise against it unless you've got a really good reason for not just installing the normal framework.