I have to correct some bugs of one of the applications of my client that I support. The version of Active Reports (DataDynamics) used by the client in this application is different of the currently installed version on my machine.
It is possible to install multiple versions of Active Reports on a single machine where some applications can use the plugin in visual studio with one version and other applications with other version.
When you have dll that are not installed in the GAC and don't installed as a plugin in visual studio, it's easy to change reference in visual studio to use multiple versions of a same dll.
When you have dll that are installed in the GAC, this is also easy because you can have multiple versions of same dll in the GAC.
But when this is a plugin installed in visual studio, I don't know how it can be possible.
I don't want to use software like VMWare because I have to install a totally new environment to just build a new version.
Anyone have an idea?
Thank you very much.
Major versions are likely to play nice with each other. For example AR 2 COM coexists with anything. AR .net 1 coexists with AR .net 3, and AR .net 3 coexists with AR 6. In the case of 3 and 6 I can verify that both sets of designer tools in Visual Studio are enabled and usable. I don't think AR .net 2 and AR .net 3 play nicely together though.
But according to Data Dynamics, minor versions don't coexist. That fits my experience, you can't have 3.0 and 3.0 SP1 installed at the same time.
So yes, you can do this if you have major version differences. If they're minor version differences, you need to uninstall your version of AR and install the one they're using before you can make changes. Personally I prefer to set CopyLocal = true on the referenced AR DLLs and distribute whatever version I'm using along with the project that way. It makes the install a bit bigger, but it also makes upgrading your AR version completely transparent to the client. They don't have to do anything and basically don't notice anything changed. There's no install at all in that case, the necessary DLLs are included with your 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 :->
Microsoft appears not to have consdiered the problems in managing Visual Studio projects when multiple versions of .Net or multiple versions of Visual Studio are in use. Can anyone recommend ways to manage these intelligently?
We have quite a bit of code that was written using Visual Studio 2008. If we want to update the code and choose to use VS 2012, VS does a one-way upgrade, and we can't use VS 2008 on those projects any more. We do have at least one machine running Windows Server 2003, and while it's not normally used for development, we do sometimes use it, and we can't install VS 2012 on it.
Worse, we have customers with computers of various operating systems, so we can't count on having a specific version of .Net. It would be nice to be able to select the .Net version in the project configuration, but we can't. The first tab of the Projects screen contains the .Net version selection, and that screen does not change with different project configurations.
I can't even really use the same source code files, because there are differences in available libraries between .Net 4.5 and earlier versions. The one that comes to mind is System.Threading.Tasks, which is included by default in .Net 4.5 files, and which isn't available in earlier .Net versions. And I don't know of any way to use compiler constants to differentiate between operating systems or .Net versions in C# as is (or at least used to be) possible in C++.
I have dealt with this same issue over the past few years and my solution has varied depending on the project. My optimum solution, and the one I use 90% of the time, is to migrate the project to the latest version of Visual Studio. For projects where that is not possible, I create virtual machines to hold the visual studio install that I need. Then whenever I need to work in the legacy project, I fire up VMware workstation and put it into full screen mode.
Not sure this would work for you, but it works for me.
You can have multiple versions of Visual Studio installed side-by-side (I have 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013, and 2015 preview all installed on the same development machine). If you have a project in which some developers cannot use the latest version of VS, then you will just need to use the older version. Though with 2012-2015 you can round-trip (i.e., there is no upgrade when you open a solution with a later version of VS).
For the .NET versions, you can target earlier versions of .NET from later versions of VS. Here you need to decide what is the minimum level of .NET that you plan to target for a given platform (expect your customers to have installed). The later versions of .NET add additional functionality so you need to decide if you want to use those features and thereby require your customer to upgrade .NET or if you will make do without those features. One option to consider is creating a simple setup program for application deployment that contains the requisite .NET boost strap installer. The next version of the framework will supposedly allow for deploying framework libraries in you application directory, which might mitigate this issue of what version of .NET the customer has installed on the system.
The development team I am joining all use VS 2010 Pro, possibly with TFS or some other SVN system. I placed an order to have it installed but our procurement process screwed up and it seems they have ordered 2012...
Are there any compatibility issues? It seems it will work with TFS 2010 but I remember going from 2008-2010 a lot of programs just broke plus they have to upgrade the project.
There's a lot that's improved from the VS2008 -> VS2010 scenario, and a bit that hasn't (or has gotten worse).
Project Compatibility
In most cases, VS2012 will be able to open a VS2010 project without making incompatible changes. The main caveat to this is that the VS2010 user needs to have SP1 installed.
Some project types from VS2010 are no longer supported in VS2012. The top ones I can think of are Setup projects or Database projects. In VS2012, these projects simply won't open (but if you don't need to build them, possibly no harm done).
See http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2012/03/28/round-tripping-with-visual-studio-11.aspx for more on this.
TFS compatibility
VS2012 should be compatible with TFS 2010, but any new functionality in VS2012 won't be available (which is logical since the server doesn't support it). For more, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd997788.aspx#compat.
Runtime compatibility
VS2012 installs .NET 4.5 (also shipped in-box with Windows 8), which is an in-place upgrade of .NET 4.0 - it replaces all of the binaries, as opposed being a side-by-side releases like 3.0 and 3.5 were to 2.0.
There are a few runtime differences that you might encounter in .NET 4.5. Some of these may be bugs in 4.5 which may be fixed in a future hotfix, and some may be intentional changes (i.e. bugs from 4.0 fixed in 4.5). The point here being, if you do run into one of these issues, your fellow developers might not encounter the same issue. Then again, if you're planning to support Windows 8, that could be a good thing.
(I don't have a list of known incompatibilities between 4.0 and 4.5... if someone does, please feel free to edit).
It depends on what features you use in Visual Studio. In our company, we have not considered an upgrade yet due to 2012 not supporting installer projects (*.vdp) - you now have to use WiX, InstallShield, or some other installer.
There are compat patches on top of VS2010SP1 specifically addressing some minor pain points for this scenario. You can find those on msdn. Link http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29082
Other than that things should just work fine as long as you ensure you have the right target framework version and platform toolsets etc for your projects eg. dont target your project to v4.5 since it will not work for your devs using VS2010
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.