I have a program in C# that was developed on a PC that has several of installed .NET frameworks, Service Packs, etc. How can I understand what are the minimal installation requirements in order to distribute the program to users? Should I start with a clean PC and test one-by-one .NET frameworks or is there a better approach?
Start by looking at the .NET version that your application is targeting.
If for example, you are targeting .NET 3.5 you will need to also include .NET 2.0
.NET 4.0 and 4.5 are self contained, so including earlier versions is not necessary for them.
You can check the version that you are targeting by going to the properties of your project (right click, properties in the solution explorer), clicking on the Build tab and looking for Target Framework
Microsoft recommends that you look for features that your application requires in the operating systems rather than look for which version of Windows you are targeting. So its better to list those out and tackle them one by one. I find this to be a bit overkill sometimes, but it does help once you get to logo certification.
check Target Framework in your Project Properties
Note :- Step for open project Solution
(Open Your Project in Visual Studio and then open solution explorer and Right click on Properties)
Some link to more Help you
1 : Retrieve Target Framework Version and Target Framework Profile from a .Net Assembly
2 : How to find the .NET framework version of a Visual Studio project?
Related
I am doing maintenance work on a VS2010 C# project built against .net v3.5.
I recently changed the project Target Framework properties to the latest version listed (v4) - due to an expectation of using a version of .net that is actually included in Win10 by default - and rebuilt without any apparent issues.
Unfortunately the embedded dependency in the generated .exe is still for .net v2.0.50727 (which is what is reported for v3.5 AFAIK) and the target machine (a clean install of Win10) is asking to install .net 3.5.
Using MS VS2010 v10.0.40219.1 SP1Rel.
Unfortunately upgrading the build tools isn't an option (building the program with VS2015 works just fine).
I have gone googling but don't seem to have found any similar reports.
Based on some of the comments already posted, I seem to have not made myself entirely clear - hopefully the following will help.
1) the intention/requirement is to be able to install this app on a clean install of Win10 without needing any further downloads. (installing .net 3.5 is easy to do, just not what is wanted)
2) the ultimate build environment for this is automated, visualized and not in my control and therefore upgrading the tool chain is a major pain that I'd like to avoid if possible.
3) AFAIK there are no third party libraries involved. All of the listed references (dll's) are v4.0.30319.
4) this is a XAML-based development, one part of three projects in the solution - the other entries are the installer and a C# custom installation library. As far as I can tell everything is set for .net v4.
Unfortunately the embedded dependency in the generated .exe is still for .net v2.0.50727 (which is what is reported for v3.5 AFAIK) and the target machine (a clean install of Win10) is asking to install .net 3.5
So there is some dependency in your project that targets that version of .NET. It could just be that you need to Build > Clean Solution and with a Build > Rebuild Solution the problem is solved.
Otherwise, assuming some library does require some .NET 3.x library, the installation request is entirely correct. Windows 10 does not have an option for installing .NET 2.0 and another for installing .NET 3.5. If you search for Turn Windows features on or off you will see this:
Any dependency on a .NET 2.x-3.x library will trigger the activation/installation of the first feature in the dialog.
As far as I can see, you have 2 options:
Move everything to a framework supported by Microsoft, most preferably .NET 4.7.2 given support and security.
Deal with the installation process and understand that Microsoft does not install these versions of .NET in purpose. You can, however, add these installers as a prerequisite and even bundle them with your installation, but that won't help much.
Thanks to all who have tried to help me!
The issue has been resolved.
There appear to have been two causes for this issue and my confusion:
it turns out that the blank install of Win10 that the testing was being performed on was not entirely clean - the pre-installed network drivers/utilities from intel also had a .Net v3.5 dependency...
one of the embedded resources in the project was effectively a uncompressed tar-ball containing a number of files; including an executable that had the dependency on .net v3.5 - this was a binary blob stored in svn so the content was had not been updated for several years (ie well before my involvement) ...
With both of these issues addressed it would appear that my problem is solved, so once again thank you for your feedback, suggestions and patience,
PeterT :->
I have made an application using C# in windows forms. I am using Install shield 2010 to create a setup file for the application. It asks me what it should check for as prerequisites which it would check for before starting to install on any other device.
However, I do not know what I should include as prerequisites for my windows application. I do not know if it requires .net 4.5 or 4 or 3.5... I also had downloaded and included some references in the project and do not know if they are being included in the setup or not...
Please help
You need to look at the project properties of your winform app and see what version of the .NET framework you are building against. In some cases you can do things like compile against .NET 2.0 but then have an App.Config file that says 2.0 and 4.0 are supported runtimes. This gives you flexibility in choosing which if any .NET to redistribute.
From there you have to look at your dependencies (references) and there dependencies. It's possible that they require additional things such as C++ runtimes, database engines. For each of these you have to figure out if it's already part of windows, if a third party redistributable exists, can it be statically linked or privately deployed and so on.
There is no one simple answer. You just have to be familiar with your code base, what it requires and what the best practices are for each of those items.
I have a .NET application that I built in 4.5, which has references to a bunch of libraries that were built in 4.5, which themselves have references to 4.5, etc. A user group that I'm trying to distribute the application to is having problems running the executable because they have 4.0 installed; in particular, they're getting a MissingMethodException:
Method not found: 'System.Type System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.GetTypeFromCLSID(System.Guid)'.
Because we may have trouble getting each user upgraded to 4.5 (as none of them have admin permissions on their machines and this would require a separate upgrade request for each user), I'm looking at finding an easy way to rebuild the project as 4.0. This seems to require that I rebuild every library and its referenced libraries in 4.0; is there an easier way to do this than going through each library one by one and building a 4.0 version? I'm thinking maybe like a one-click option for "Rebuild all referenced libraries in target framework" or something like that.
If you have dependencies on .Net 4.5 DLLs then you will need to also get .Net 4.0 versions of those if you want to successfully downgrade your project. A .Net project can only reference .Net DLLs up to the same version of .Net as the referencing assembly.
The easiest way to do this is to use something like NuGet to manage your dependencies. Note that when you change the target framework version of your project in VS you will need to uninstall and re-install dependencies with NuGet as NuGet does not automatically do this for you when you change the target framework version.
Of course if all the dependencies are to your own code and you aren't publishing this through a dependency management system like NuGet you will need to downgrade all your other code to .Net 4.0 as well
When I use Visual Studio, I right click on the project, change the framework, fix the References and recompile. Usually straight forward.
Please, have a look at this MSDN page to correctly switch your project to a lower target framework without problems! It is a little bit outdated for what concerns versions, but the process is the same described!
This is based on my experience. I had an application initially created in .net framework 4.5 but I wanted to convert it in .net framework 4.0. I created new project initially created 4.0 and then I did copy and paste of all the forms and controls of my previous application and it works. Framework 4.5 is using Aero2 and 4.0 is Aero... Good Luck :)
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
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.