Deploying a .net 4.0 application - c#

I have an application built with .net 4.0 and uses WPF
My users have Windows 7 with default .net 3.5 installed.
My application cannot be downgraded to .net 3.5 and I want to avoid users from going through the process of downloading and installing .net 4.0 which is about 40MB (Even with silent install).
Since my application is a small one, is there a way to deploy it with only the required .net 4.0 libraries? and thus avoiding the installation of the entire .net 4.0 framework
If this is not possible, is there a way to execute the .net 4.0 app in a .net 3.5 environment?

If this is not possible, is there a way to execute the .net 4.0 app in a .net 3.5 environment?
No. Basically you really need to get the environments aligned. You say your application cannot be downgraded to .NET 3.5 - presumably that's because you're using something which is specific to .NET 4.0. It stands to reason that you can't then execute that in an environment which doesn't have .NET 4.0.
You need to decide which is more painful - changing your app to target .NET 3.5, or asking your users to install .NET 4.0.

Related

Targeting .NET Core vs .NET Standard

We've a server side "classic" WCF .NET application running on Windows. We added last year Linux support using Mono and a Web-Api replacement of WCF.
Checking the compatibility with the Api-Port tool, we found that the we would need much few changes targeting directly .NET Core instead of .NET Standard.
So for server side application like ours, that will be running only on Windows and Linux, is it correct to say that does not make any sense to target .NET Standard?
For server-side applications targeting .NET Core is enough.
There is a detailed answer here: What is the difference between .NET Core and .NET Standard Class Library project types?

Can you launch a app C# so it doesn't need the .NET and you don't downgrade the .NET version

I asked this before but if i downgrade to .NET 3.5 I am not able to do some things with the windows form application I get errors because some things that have been added in later versions are not in the version that I am using.
I am making the application for Windows 7.
Link to previous: Can you launch a app C# so it doesn't need the .NET
As C# is essentialy a human-readable version of .NET's intermediate language (IL) you cannot run an application created using C# without .NET runtime installed.
You don't need to downgrade anything - just change target version to 3.5. However, you'll have to stick to features of 3.5 and below in that case.
If you want to use 4.0+ - just make an installer for your app which installs .NET 4.0 runtime alongside.
P.S.
I personally really doubt that there is noticable count of boxes running Windows 7 without at least .NET 4.0.
Just include the required Framework for your application in the Installer. They should be able to run side-by-side.

.Net 4.0 targeting on windows 8.x

I'm a bit confused about targeting .net 4.0 app to run on windows 8.x. In my understanding, windows 8.0 comes with 4.5 and windows 8.1 comes with 4.5.1. So my question, if I build a WinForms or WPF client app targeting c#/.net 4.0 (in Visual Studio Project settings) and of course only using .net 4.0 features (i.e, no features from .net 4.5.x), then will this app run fine on windows 8.x without having install .net 4.0 framework (that is, only relying on what comes installed with OS)? Basically, I'm trying to avoid forcing end user to install .net 4.0 framework on their machine before running the app.
Looking at DLLs properties of various Microsoft DLLs (e.g., System) they show same runtime version when targeting either .net 4.0 or .net 4.5.x --> v4.0.30319. So my understanding here is that 4.0 and 4.5.x are targeting same clr runtime version So, my .net 4.0 app should run fine???
From ref here (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb822049%28v=vs.110%29.aspx), it says .net 4.0 can't even be installed on win8.x.
In my tests, targeting .net 4.0 and running on clean install of win8.1 seems to work fine (without having to install anything else) but looking for advice on gotchas.
Thanks.
Note that the .NET framework is intrinsically backwards compatible - .NET 4.5 will execute .NET 4.0 code just fine. This can be seen even within a solution in that a .NET 4.5/4.5.1 project can reference an older .NET project without incident. This includes .NET 4.0, as well as earlier versions.
In addition to the backwards compatibility, .NET 4.5 does run on the CLR 4.0 - 4.5 is simply a library and compiler expansion.
Possible gotchas
This emphasis on backwards compatibility is why we almost never see functions disappear from the .NET Framework, just get marked [Obsolete]. it's a good idea to check if any functions you use have become Obsolete, though this is rare and such functions usually continue to work as expected.
Windows 8 does NOT like Drive mapping, and will demand that you use UNC paths if you application touches any networks drives.
Windows 8 can be far more aggressive with requiring Admin privileges to run, up to and including needing to explicitly start VS as admin when trying to compile a program which outputs to C:\Program Files\...
Final note: ALWAYS test your application on the targeted platform before releasing to users.
Per this question:
.NET Framework 4.5 was released on 15 August 2012., a set of new or improved features were added into this version. The .NET Framework 4.5 is only supported on Windows Vista or later. The .NET Framework 4.5 uses Common Language Runtime 4.0, with some additional runtime features.
I would say then that by virtue of having .NET 4.5 installed you will also always have .NET 4.0 installed. I don't think this should be an issue then!
From the link you posted:
Each new version of the .NET Framework retains features from the previous versions and adds new features.
Also from that link:
The .NET Framework 4.5 is an in-place update that replaces the .NET Framework 4 on your computer, and similiarly, the .NET Framework 4.5.1 4.5.2, and 4.6 Preview are in-place updates to the .NET Framework 4.5, which means that they use the same runtime version, but the assembly versions are updated and include new types and members.
So, if a system has 4.5, it will be able to run apps targeted for 4.0 as well. The fact that some versions cannot be installed most likely only means that they are already included from the start.

Is it safe for an application using .NET 4.0 if the framework is replaced with .NET 4.5?

I'm using Windows 7 and VisualStudio 2010. The application was developing is using the .net framework 4.0. Is it safe if I replace it with .NET 4.5? Will it break the app?
Will it matter if I'm developing using the framework 4.5 (without using its new features), and my teammates are using 4.0 and our production and staging are also using the 4.0?
Need to advise.
The only way to make sure you don't break anything when moving from 4.0 to 4.5 is test, test, and test.
From my experience, I have never found any problem when my team move a silverlight and wcf project from .NET 4.0 to .NET 4.5.
Check out the list of changes from .Net 4.0 to 4.5 and this blog post for information about compatibility between 4.0 and 4.5.
As long as your project targets the 4.0 runtime you'll probably be OK, I've only experienced one hiccup and that was back in beta (dealing with compiled Regex assemblies). Also, I wouldn't expect the performance characteristics to be consistent between the devs running 4.0 and those running 4.5.

IIS7: Why can't i Choose v3.5 .net Framework?

The only choices for the application pools are .net 2.0 or 4.0, but my machine is running on 3.5.
I am currently getting a
system.platformnotsupportedexeception
in an app that i built, and i think it might be related to this issue.
Keep in mind, there is no 3.5 version of the .NET runtime - only a 3.5 version of the .NET Framework. The CLR itself is either 2.0 or 4.0. Why they have weird versioning is beyond me (I guess there were no runtime modifications to support the 3.5 framework), but the framework versions are different than the runtime versions.
.NET 3.5 has the same base runtime as .NET 2.0. So in your case, selecting 2.0 is correct.
See this similar question.

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