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 ?
Related
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.
My programming language is C# .Net 3.5 and I may have to install my applications in very old client systems (windows XP-SP1 and above) and may be that those systems do not contain any version of .Net (or even Windows-Installer-3.1) in them.
I have worked on VS-2008 deployment projects on and off since some time and I have some working knowledge of it.
I want to write a deployment project in VS-2008 but I have 2 questions :
Can a VS-2008 deployment project containing pre-requisites run on a system without any version of .Net (or even Windows-Installer-3.1) pre-installed in the system ?
How to create a boot-strapper installer to run in systems without .net pre-installed in them (boot strapper will install all pre-requisites including .net and other 3rd party run times) ?
Regards
Akshay Mishra
Can a VS-2008 deployment project containing pre-requisites run on a
system without any version of .Net (or even Windows-Installer-3.1)
pre-installed in the system ?
Yes, the EXE bootstrapper which handles prerequisites doesn't have any dependencies. So you can safely add Windows Installer and .NET Framework as prerequisites in your setup project.
How to create a boot-strapper installer to run in systems without .net
pre-installed in them (boot strapper will install all pre-requisites
including .net and other 3rd party run times) ?
Here is an article which may help: http://setupanddeployment.com/uncategorized/custom-prerequisite-visual-studio-setup-file/
You can use Salamander .net linker. I don't exactly understand what it does but what I know is that I was able to pack the necessary reference and the program into 1 folder. When I move the folder to a computer without .net framework installed, it was able to run.
The demo version of the program will give u nag screens every time u run the packed program.
The side effect of doing it this way is my program file size increased from few KB to 40MB.
Other references ..just for information:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/321269/Analyzing-a-Net-executable-or-DLL-without-NET-inst
http://www.codeproject.com/Questions/157853/Running-the-c-exe-without-net-framework-on-machine
You need to have .Net version installed on the client system.
Else it wont works.
Because even to start your application your application will search for CLR 2008 version.
You can do one thing. If you dont want to install .Net Framework, please develop your application in lower version of .Net framework.(May be .Net 2.0 will work without any requirement since it is XP SP1)
No, because there are not just DLLs, there is common language runtime needed to execute your program. Read the great book by Richter to better understand what happens when you create a program using .net libraries and its lifecycle.
By the way, i'm not quite sure, there must be some older version of .net installed with SP1. So may be you consider changing your application to use .NET 2?
UPDATE
May be you want to add .NET to your setup as prerequisite? You can add them without creating bootstrapper packages. See the article: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/35976/Add-Prerequisites-of-NET-Framework-in-Visual-Studi
Is there any way to make a WPF Browser Application prompt to install .NET Framework with ClickOnce like a regular installable WPF Application?.
Those publishing options are locked when the HostInBrowser property in the project file is set to True, which is necessary for the application i'm developing, however i need to make the installation of dependencies user friendly, and possibly from the .net framework installer already hosted in my server, as it would cut down greatly the use of bandwidth.
The program is intended to be used in intranet, as a "web page", by placing shortcuts on the desktop of each computer (which is done at the first run of the app), but most of the users don't have .NET Framework 4 installed.
is there any way to accomplish this without converting it to an installable wpf application?
Thanks in advance, Jesús.
No ClickOnce requires the .Net framework, because it's a component of it.
All ClickOnce applications require that the correct version of the .NET
Framework is installed on a computer before they can be run
You can however set a prerequisite which is a higher version of the framework, provided they have at least version 2.0 to begin with.
Commonly a bootstrapper written in managed code is used to overcome this limitation. You could use MSBuild for this, dotNetInstaller, or other third party tools. I've used dotNetInstaller a few times a recommend it, it's very flexible.
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.
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).