So since the existing questions about this only talk about .Net Framework (obviously, they're old), I thought I'd try to find out if I can compile my WPF .NET 6 application on wine to run on windows.
My immediate problem is that I'd like to avoid trying to setup a windows gitlab runner (no free windows VMs or docker containers for devs) by just compiling via wine. I'll definitely run this on windows, as this a client application, but I'd also like to build it in my CI pipeline, which seems to require a windows server for WPF.
compiling via wine
You do not need to do that, .Net Core can fully compile under any operating system. You can either do a normal framework compilation or a targeted self-contained compilation for any of the supported OSs.
Also all of this is supported out of the box with GitHub actions, it uses the required Docker runtime to build your artifacts and publishes them for you. Presumably GitLab should also do that.
I've developed an application in .NET 5.0, also, I've a Setup Project to install this application in my clients.
My steps are:
1.- Publish the .NET 5.0 Application.
2.- Compile the Setup project.
3.- Install the setup.exe generated in "2" in the client.
But when I try to install the program in my client, windows says "This installation requires the 5.0.0(x64) version of .NET Desktop Runtime... So I've to download and install the SDK in every client.
My question is: There is some way to avoid this SDK installation? Can I embeed the .NET Desktop Runtime in the .NET 5.0 App or in the Setup Project?
Thanks in advance.
See .NET application publishing overview, specifically publishing a self-contained application. That way all necessary framework files will be included in your application, and you will not the framework to be installed. This will increase the disk requirement a bit if .Net 5 is already installed, since some files will be duplicated.
The alternative is to bundle the the .Net framework installer in your installation script. This will cause the setup-file to be quite a bit larger, unless the script downloads the framework on demand. But it may save some disk space in case there are multiple applications that use .Net 5.
Go on projet Menu/ projetct properties / publish / require components / uncheck you frameWork .
I have created app in Visual C# which uses DotNet library. On my machine the app runs okay (obviously) and also on my second laptop which I use at work. Problem is - at work we have group policies enabled so that we cannot install anything. Colleagues have different laptops and different DotNet libraries. Some have 4.6, some 4.5, some 2.6. Is there a way to design app that it will fetch or set, which library it will use ? So will test it, if the app can run on any version and then users will dont have a problem to run it on whatever version they have preinstalled. Is it possible ?
I want to start doing a cross platform project that will run on Linux and Windows.
I went to mono's website to check things out as I heard mono allows me to run c# on Linux, but when I arrived there http://mono-project.com/Main_Page I was a bit confused.
The download page allows me to download it just fine but in order to program mono on VS2010 I need to pay for mono-tools or are there any alternatives within VS2010 ?
In short what do I need to be able to use mono with VS2010 and what are the alternatives to programming mono without VS2010 ?
You can develop in Linux using MonoDevelop.
You can also develop on Windows using Visual Studio 2010 Express Edition, and target the Microsoft .NET Framework. You can then run your assemblies through the Mono Migration Analyzer (MoMA) to make sure they'll run successfully on Linux/Mono. Since Mono uses the same standard IL as the Microsoft framework, the application will run unchanged on Linux, provided you stick to supported portions of the framework.
You don't need to do anything special in your .NET development in order to use mono (aside from writing compatible code). Mono is simply a free implementation of the .NET framework, which will simply run applications written for .NET, regardless of underlying OS platform (i.e. Linux).
Basically, you just need to develop your .NET application as normal, and then you can run that application on mono if you so choose. Since Mono is it's own implementation, there may be some differences, and you can use the Mono compatibility tool to ensure that the .NET code you've written is compatible with Mono's implementation of the .NET framework.
You may also want to download a VMWare image of Mono or something similar if you'd like to spin up a Linux virtual machine for testing of how your application actually runs on a Mono-enabled machine once you've started development.
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).