I have a Winforms application developed in c# targetting .Net Framework 4.0. I created a setup for the application and packaged the .Net Framework 4.0 within the setup. During installation, the setup installs the .Net Framework 4.0 (if not installed already), and the application works fine.
I know it's not possible to run .Net application without .Net Framework. Is there some way I can package the CLR, JIT, and all required dll's with my application so that I won't need to install the entire .Net Framework 4.0 on the target machine?
Can i create my own installer for .Net Framework 4.0? Installer which insalls only the libraries which are required for my application, thus eliminating the need to install entire .Net Framework?
I have looked into ngen, Turbo Studio etc. to containerize the application but that does not suit for my purpose. Any help will be highly appreciated.
The .NET Framework was not designed to be deployed partially. I don't think this is possible - even if you will get that to work, it won't be supported officially. You might even see that your app is running but it might crash at any time later as soon as an assembly gets referenced (lazy by reflection, for example) you have no direct reference to.
Having only those parts of the framework deployed which are directly or indirectly referenced by your app is one of the main ideas of .NET Core - but you won't be able to do full-featured UIs with it by now.
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Our client has complained about the count of .dll files in the .NET Core app we made for them. Their dissatisfaction persists even after we explained that this is how .NET Core works.
Now I do understand their position completely, my jaw dropped too when I created the package for the first time:
Note how small the scroll bar is. Most of the library names begin with Microsoft. or System. - those that don't are libraries that I use and installed manually.
So the question is: is there anything I can do about this to make our client happy? Aren't the System.* libraries already installed on their machine as a part of .NET Core runtime?
We're targeting .NET Core 1.0 at this moment.
You can create two types of deployments for .NET Core applications:
Framework-dependent deployment
Self-contained deployment
It seems you need Framework-dependent deployments (FDD).
Portable (FDD) application is similar to the traditional .NET Framework application. In this case, a certain version of the .NET Core Framework (also known as shared framework, .NET Core Runtime, redist) should be on the target computer, and when the host starts, the process will load Core CLR, Core FX from the frame folder.
Artifacts of the same Portable Application for different versions of the .NET Core platform
You can see what Directory structure of published ASP.NET Core apps should be
To run Portable applications, at least one .NET Core Runtime (shared framework) must be installed on the target machine. The framework files (s) are stored in the C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared folder.
Core is designed to do this. In old .NET Framework apps, there's a runtime dependency on .NET Framework, i.e. the end-user must have the version of the .NET Framework the application targets installed on the machine as well. Core takes a different approach; it brings everything it needs into the build. As a result, you can drop this folder on any machine, no matter how it's set up and "run" it. (Now technically, you need dotnet.exe in order to run it, unless you build as an executable, but that's just to run the main app DLL.)
Anyways, this is by design, and it's actually much better when you think about it. Your app has just the dependencies it actually needs and nothing else. You don't have to worry about external things like what version of .NET Framework is installed, etc.
That said, I know there's some third-party applications (mostly commercial) that can enable you to "bundle" DLLs or even package up everything into a single executable. However, I'm not sure how compatible, if at all, these are with .NET Core. Still, if your client insists, I'd just see if you can find some tool that does that and essentially "hide" the DLLs.
So I've always known it's okay to run multiple versions of the .NET framework on a single computer (client or server alike). This question, though a bit old, talks about this.
A while back, however, I was tasked with creating a new ASP.NET application, and I was trying to decide whether to use the full .NET framework or .NET Core, and I came across this article from Microsoft. The article states that if I need side-by-side installations of the framework, I should use .NET Core. Here's the full quote:
To install applications with dependencies on different versions of
.NET, we recommend .NET Core. .NET Core offers side-by-side
installation of different versions of the .NET Core runtime on the
same machine. This side-by-side installation allows multiple services
on the same server, each of them on its own version of .NET Core.
But I thought side-by-side installations of the Framework were already possible without .NET Core? What am I missing?
The reason I ask is that I currently have an old ASP.NET application that uses the .NET Framework 2.0, and I am now working on one that uses .NET Core. I ran into some issues that got me considering switching the .NET Core app to the full .NET Framework 4.6, but that Microsoft article got me a bit confused.
The question is: will I be able to run both apps (.NET framework 2.0 and 4.6) on the same Windows 2008 R2 server without issues? If so, then what is that article referring to?
One last thing: both my apps (old and new) use Crystal Reports. There's a possibility that the new app might need a newer version of Crystal Reports than the old app. Will I be able to run different versions of Crystal Reports like this on the same server? Is this the situation in which I would require .NET Core like the Microsoft article says?
Thank you
Side-by-side installations of the framework are not only possible, they are a fact. NET 1.0, 2.0 and everything past 4.0 all have separate installations. However:
.NET 3.0 and 3.5 both use the 2.0 runtime and are therefore not truly separate.
Similarly, .NET 4.5 and all versions above all use the 4.0 runtime and are therefore not separate from each other. To further complicate things, when you install a later version, the base 4.0 runtime is actually upgraded.
Last but not least, which framework version gets picked to run your application has changed with .NET 4.0. The rules for this are rather complicated and depend on both the versions installed and the application configuration; see this article for a full discussion.
To your question, then:
Will I be able to run both apps (.NET framework 2.0 and 4.6) on the
same Windows 2008 R2 server without issues?
If .NET Framework 2.0 and 4.6 are both installed, then yes. Assuming no special configuration settings, the 2.0 application will run on the 2.0 framework, but it can also be configured to use the 4.6 framework (which will present itself as the 4.0 runtime).
If so, then what is that article referring to?
The article is referring to the fact that the full .NET Framework has gradually abandoned the idea of perfectly separate side-by-side installations by having no separations between minor version (and sometimes even major versions), while .NET Core has doubled down on the idea by allowing self-contained deployment. That is to say, not only can a .NET Core 1.0 and a .NET Core 2.0 application coexist without any risk of sharing dependencies the way a .NET Framework 2.0 and 3.5 application would, even two .NET Core 1.0 applications can exist together without sharing dependencies, something which is not possible for full .NET Framework applications. If (say) a patch is installed for .NET 2.0, it will affect all .NET 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5 applications, at least on the binary level. You cannot choose to have some applications affected by the patch and not others (although configuration switches are usually added for behavior that breaks compatibility).
One last thing: both my apps (old and new) use Crystal Reports.
There's a possibility that the new app might need a newer version of
Crystal Reports than the old app. Will I be able to run different
versions of Crystal Reports like this on the same server? Is this the
situation in which I would require .NET Core like the Microsoft
article says?
This is independent of the framework and depends on how Crystal Reports itself handles versioning. According to the manufacturer, the answer is yes, for major releases but not minor updates:
Side-by-side installation of different major release version of
Crystal Reports designer is supported since Crystal Reports 9,
because each major release version installs the software in different
directory.
You do not require .NET Core to make side-by-side installation of different assembly versions possible. What's more, even if you used a self-contained deployment of your .NET Core application, it would likely still refer to the shared installation of Crystal Reports on the machine, not to a self-contained deployment of Crystal Reports (I don't think such a thing exists; I'm not even sure Crystal Reports is currently supported on .NET Core).
Last but not least: note that some versions of .NET are no longer officially supported. The policies on what versions are supported (and where) are fairy complex, depending as they do on whether the Framework was part of the OS or not, but detailed here. .NET 4.6 has some very nasty JIT compiler bugs (fixed in 4.6.1), so you really don't want to be using it anyway, official support or no. If your server does not yet have any version of .NET past 2.0 installed, you may as well jump directly to the latest supported version for your OS (as of writing, 4.8).
We have an application with around 300+ components (dll's and a couple of exe's). Some of them target 4.0 framework, some use 2.0 framework, some are written in native C++ (unmanged), some uses C++/CLI and a couple of them are written in ManagedExtensions for C++.
Now our requirement is to migrate to .NET Framework 4.5.2.
So my question is:
Will it be OK if I just change the TargetFramework version on all the exe's to 4.5.2 with out changing the dll's TargetFramework version?
Does it guarantee that all my dll's are loaded and run in 4.5.2 runtime? (Included all the C++ dll's).
I have gone through multiple articles on internet and I could not find a concrete answer in the scenario where we have a mix of C#, managed c++ and unmanaged c++ dlls. Any help is appreciated.
Edit: Our team generate core libraries (sort of a framework) and few executables (targetted to 2.0 framework) which can be used by various other teams to meet their customer specific requirements. Some of the customers are not yet migrated from XP (Max .NET framework used in XP is 4.0). So along with newer OS's we still need to support clients using XP.
While 2.0 projects are generally upgradable to 4.5.x with no code changes, there are breaking-differences between .NET versions that you may run into. Given the scale and complexity of your project I must advise against blindly changing the TargetFramework property and hoping for the best.
While 4.0 executables can load 2.0 DLLs, it is not recommended because of the breaking-changes I described.
You will run into problems with the mixing of C++ code. I recommend you start by upgrading (or rather, rewriting) your "Managed Extensions for C++" code to C++/CLI (you might want to take advantage of C++11 and C++14 features present in VS2015 while you're at it).
I recommend upgrading each project individually and separately, working your way up the dependency-chain. It will help if you have (or will write) unit tests and integration tests for more critical parts of your system.
Migrating from 2.0 to 4.5.2 is just click click job, whereas no gaurantee thay it wont break anything. Recently I upgraded a webapplication to 4.5.2 and there were requestvalidation issue,3rd party tool broke and what not.
So one cannot say it will work seamlessly, you have to test it out to see if it works.
Now mixing 2.0 with 4.5.2 may cause chaos as you need to take into account consuming application too at the time of writing code.
I have a C# program which I want to make available to my users, but the problem is that it requires .NET framework version 4.0. This is a problem because it was released pretty recently (April 2010) and a lot of people probably don't have it. To make matters worse it takes a while to download and install the framework (~10 minutes).
Is there any way I can install just a part of the framework I need? If that isn't possible can I compile my code down to a native binary for specific systems
eg. x86 32-bit, x86 64-bit, etc.
I've looked at a company called 'spoon' http://spoon.net/ but that looks like it just emulates apps on a server (sort of like citrix). What can I do to resolve this dilemma?
Anyone who wants to run your program needs the appropriate version of the .NET Framework installed. There's no way to work around this. It honestly amazes me how often this question gets asked. You can't compile .NET code down to any kind of a "native binary", and you can't distribute only the portions of the framework that you need. If all of this was important to you, you should have chosen a different development platform in the beginning.
Your only option is to bundle the .NET Framework along with your application's installer. The way to make this easiest on your customers is to use Visual Studio to create a setup project that will automatically install the .NET FW if they don't have it already, and then install your application, all in a single step process.
Visual Studio has built-in support for creating such a setup project, and most of the dirty work is handled for you. File -> New Project -> Other Project Types -> Setup & Deployment -> Visual Studio Installer. Then, pick either the "Setup Project" or "Setup Wizard" option, and follow the instructions.
The only thing to keep in mind since you've developed for .NET 4.0 is that there are two versions of this framework: the full version and the "Client Profile". The Client Profile is an attempt to do exactly as you mention and install only the portions of the framework that are used by the typical application. You have to first figure out of this is a deployment option for you. If your program uses classes that are not available in the Client Profile, you need to install the full version. Otherwise, you can consider installing the Client Profile, which is the default for all new projects targeting .NET 4.0 in VS 2010. Check the "Target Framework" settings for your application, under the project Properties. If it's not set to Client Profile already, try changing it and see if it will compile. That's the quickest way to tell if this deployment option is available to you. But there's only about a 15% difference in size between the two frameworks, so it isn't really that big of a deal if you must deploy the full version.
Either way, the setup project will automatically determine and bundle the correct version for your app. Definitely don't make the user download and run the .NET installer separately. Use the setup project and do this for them automatically. If you don't have VS or don't want to use the one it provides, investigate alternatives, like Inno Setup, which also support deploying and installing the .NET runtime with an app.
In many cases you do not need the entire .NET Framework 4.0 and can use the much smaller .NET Framework Client Profile. You can then use an installer to bundle the client profile installer with your app into a single deployment.
You cannot run a .NET app without the framework. If this is a deployment issue for your customers, you should consider either a Click-Once installer (web-based automated installation and updating) or porting the app to Silverlight.
For the sake of completeness, there is also the possibility for .NET Core release deploy Self-Contained Deployments (SCD) nowadays. When you create a self-contained deployment, .NET Core tools automatically include the latest serviced runtime of the .NET Core version that your application targets.
Deploying a Self-contained deployment has two major advantages:
You have sole control of the version of .NET Core that is deployed with your app. .NET Core can be serviced only by you.
You can be assured that the target system can run your .NET Core app, since you're providing the version of .NET Core that it will run on.
Here is a small guide from Scott Hanselman.
I have winforms application. When I look at the references they are all .net 4 (same as the application) apart from one which says v2.0. I can run the app locally and use functionality from the .net components but as soon as I take the app to another machine it wont fire up. Apparently this hapens when references cant be found.
Im very confused as to why this would work locally. I have checked the GAC and only .net 2.0 versions exist for the referenced dlls.?..
What are the rules around rererencing dlls from older versions on .net?
It is perfectly fine to have the two versions of the framework running on the same machine. Are both .NET 2 and .NET 4 installed on the second machine you are testing on? I suspect that they are not.
Yes you can reference .Net 2.0 dlls from .Net 4.0 project.
You might be referencing only .Net 2.0 dlls but your target framework might be .Net 4.0, which might not be available on your other machine.
To correct this:
Open your project properties.
Set Target framework to .Net Framework 2.0 or 4.0.
If you set it to 4.0, you must have 4.0 installed on the machine you want it to run on.
The quickest way to see which versions are installed on a machine:
open VS command prompt and type clrver. (Ofcourse you'll need .Net SDK)
To see which framework your app uses type clrver
you can get for your application from task manager (in process tab, click View->select columns->check PID)
Starting .NET 4.0, your app can target multiple frameworks in different AppDomains in the same process.
Remember that the framework that your application is determined automatically, but you can override this default behaviours. One way to do this is what I described above.
Note that the GAC location has changed between .Net 2.0 and .Net 4.0. You most likely have both versions installed on your machine and you have looked at the 2.0 GAC.
The second machine most likely does not have 2.0 installed, hence it fails running.