What is a way I can a native EXE using C#, I want to compile a basic EXE which will run without the need for the .net framework. I've heard of ngen.exe can anyone give me examples of ngen.exe or any better ways. Also I will have a runtime for the application being generated how can I place it into the application so anybody who is using my language can use its features.
Can't do that. Anything written with C# will require the .NET framework to be installed on the machine in which it runs. NGEN is just an optimization; it does not remove the need for the framework.
To do this you'll need C++ or some other language that does not require a runtime.
Related
am developing a flash copy protect software with c#. The software is to remain on the flash drive(can not be transfered out or installed in the computer), it is a click and run software, no installation. I know that for it to work on other computers, the computer must have .net framework installed in it. I was thinking if it can be possible to add .net framework dll to the startup path of the application. If it will work, pls let me know and how to do it.
If there are other methods besides switching my project to C or C++, pls let me know. Thanks.
In normal .NET compilation (regardless of source language), the product is a (MS)IL - (Microsoft) Intermediate Language - dll. In case of executeables, it is given some native bootstrap code, a entry point, but it is still stricly tied to the Framework installation and works for nearly everything like a .NET dll. The Framework has to do the final IL -> Native Code translation. IL is a concept very similar to Java Bytecode, but with about 5 years of what works and does not work in Java.
.NET Native does not compile IL. It compiles hard, native code. Similar to the one any Native C++ (not to be mistaken with C++ .NET) compiler would make. The same a Delphi compiler would make. The same the Framework itself is written in. The final programm will have local copies of all the .NET .dll's it accesses. It is fully independant of any .NET Framework installation.
I have a VBA EXE which is used in my document converting application and we deliver this to multiple clients and they never complained about any compatibility issue but now we are migrating the project to C#. So below are my doubts that i want to clear of first
A EXE generated from C#.net to run at client system will need .NET framework to be setup at client system. So is there any way of achieving this with out setting up .NET framework
How does VBA EXE run in almost any system with out framework to be installed for it
The only way to do this that I know of is through static compilation using Mono or using commercial product. My understanding is this compiles the .NET framework into native code and includes it in your application(generally only the pieces you are actually using). This is probably territory for very experienced .NET developers. Even as a very experienced C# developer, I have never encountered a situation where the potential problems involved in doing this outweighs the cost of simply installing .NET. See: Static compilation in the .NET world
VBA == Visual Basic for Applications, and thus it only runs in the context of applicatiosn such as Excel or Word. You might be referring to VB such as VB 6, in which it is possible to compile to a native exe, which can be executed directly by the operating system because it is machine code. .NET on the other hand compiles to a language that is mostly machine agnostic, essentially deferring that last step of compilation to machine code until it is executed on the target machine, and thus the .NET framework must be installed on the target machine so that it can handle this last step. Additionally there are alot of benefits to having the .NET framework libraries externalized and shared: no duplicate deployment per application, security fixes not dependent on application author updating their side-by-side DLLs, etc. For understanding of machine code see: Assembly code vs Machine code vs Object code?
for strict constrains in my scenarios, I have very few room to install my application, and .net framework is not installable (any version).
If the application is really simple (more or less), it is possible to create an application in visual studio (in c#) with no dependendency from the .net framework?
Thanks!
Short answer: NO.
There is no way to create a .NET application without any framework.
It is possible to compile a C# app such that it has no dependencies on any of the built-in .NET types & libraries, by using the /nostdlib switch (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fa13yay7.aspx). You then need to supply your own System namespace.
However, this doesn't remove the need for the .NET framework on the target machine if you use the standard C# compiler. As well as containing the built-in types, the framework also includes the JIT IL compiler, the CLR extra, which all .NET executables and dll's are reliant on.
There are ways of compiling C# code such that it doesn't need the framework though. The Xamarin product for example (http://xamarin.com/), supports compiling C# code to native iOS apps, which are wholely independent of the .NET framework. I'm not aware of any equivalent for "desktop" OS's though.
Writing, compiling and running a C# program without .Net means running a special C# compiler that produces native code instead of managed code. I think such a compiler exists from WinRT for mobile phones, which uses COM instead of .Net (And C++/CX instead of C++/CLI). Code it produces does not depend on the .Net Framework, but does depend on the WinRT runtime.
You may create mono GTK# application and then use mkbundle to generate independent executable. You can use Visual Studio to build your logic and use Xamarin studio to build GTK# GUI. For more information about mkbundle see this and this.
To reply to your query. It really is not possible to create a .Net application without the .Net frame work. And moreover if you have installed Visual Studio by default it would have asked you to install .Net framework or would have installed it by default. In that scenario there is already .Net framework installed in your PC.
Thanks
There's a program written entirely in C# that targets .NET Framework 2.0.
Is there a way I could somehow compile (translate) managed EXE to a native one so it could be .NET-agnostic? I know there are probably commercial products for that purpose... but they are a bit expensive.
The problem is that we are to deploy the program on computers running Windows XP with no .NET Framework installed. There's also a requirement that the program's size must not exceed 500Kb (1Mb maximum) for it is downloaded from the web server (now the size is 255Kb). That is why there's no way we could attach a full-fledged .NET FX (or even a reduced one) to the downloaded program's file.
Obviously it is a terrible software engineering error that should have been detected and avoided earlier so we could use native technologies like C++ instead.
We have tried for now Novell's Mono - an open-source implementation of .NET Framework for Linux, MAC and Windows. Mono consists of C# Compiler, IDE, runtime (CLR) and Class Library assemblies (like System.dll and mscorlib.dll - much like .NET's class library assemblies installed to GAC).
What we tried to do is to locate CLR files and ship those along with our program's file and a few assemblies. This way the program can be invoked by running "mono program.exe" (command prompt) on a user's computer.
In addition to the inconvenience of such a use for the end user CLR files (mono.exe and mono.dll) turned out to be about 2.5 Mb in total that is much greater than the desired 500 Kb or even 1 Mb.
So, we have left with no other option but to translate our .NET App to a native one by a compiler, however the question remains - what compiler should we use and where could we find one...
For now I have stumbled upon a Singularity OS Project by Microsoft Research. It is an open-source research OS that is written in managed code (in part at least). The Singularity OS includes a Bartok compiler that the OS uses in order to translate a managed program to a native one (x86 32 bit). It should be noted that Bartok can't translate all the aspects of .NET 2.0 to a native code, but most of them. However I haven't yet learnt how to use the Singularity...
I would be really grateful to you if you could provide me with some useful tips and advice regarding the problem, your own experience with Singularity OS and Bartok Compiler or another approaches to the problem that I have overlooked and ways of solving it.
Thank you very much in advance!
Finally, using Mono's Full AOT feature (on Callum Rogers' advice) I've managed to produce a program.exe.dll that lacks a CLI header.
So it looks to me like a native dll. However I can't figure out how to convert that dll into exe or make it operational.
Also this dll doesn't seem to expose any functions of interest such as main function.
Check out AOT (Ahead Of Time) Compilation from the Mono project. This compiles your managed project into a native exe or an elf executable (depending on which system you target) that does not need the JIT. This is the technique used to get mono apps onto the iPhone (where the JIT/Framework are not allowed) and also has the added benefits of faster startup times, lower memory usage and it makes it harder for people to decompile your code. You said you were already using Mono, so it should be compatible.
Read up about it at the mono-project.com website and at Miguel de Icaza's blog (and iPhone info).
Note that you cannot use dynamic code or generic interfaces like
interface IFoo<T> {
...
void SomeMethod ();
}
And you will have to compile the DLLs of all the libraries you use.
PS: Make sure to use "Full" AOT for your problem.
2018 Update
At Build 2018, Microsoft announced .Net Core 3.0 roadmap that support Windows desktop applications (Winform & WPF)
2017 Update
For console apps, you can use .net core Self-contained deployments (SCD). Even for a hello world app, your package will 50MB+. You still need to install VC runtime though.
Update
As #jenix's comment, .NET Native is only for Windows Store Apps(UWP). After 3 years of it's announcement, this is still true, .net native for desktop may be dropped by microsoft . So this answer is not applicable anymore.
========
Microsoft Announced .NET Native Preview on Build 2014
With the .NET Native Developer Preview, apps will get deployed on end-user devices as fully self-contained natively compiled code, and will not have a dependency on the .NET Framework on the target device/machine. So, no .NET framework required on the target machine with .NET Native.
Announcing .NET Native Preview
Microsoft .NET Native
There is a project called CrossNet that parses .Net Assemblies and generates unmanaged C++ code, that can be compiled in any standard compiler.
Not really a solution for .NET to native conversion, but maybe this helps: http://www.yoda.arachsys.com/csharp/faq/#framework.required
Not quite sure that there is much you can do besides painstakingly rewrite the application. To ease the already burdening process, you could disassemble the .NET application using something like Reflector (into Microsoft C++), and use that as a base to start and just replace managed C++ references with native ones.
Is it possible to force the C# compiler to pull all the referenced calls out of the framework and pack them into dlls or even a single executable?
I like writing quick 'one-off' applications with C#, however I don't want to have to install the whole framework on the target machine once it's ready to go.
You ask a loaded question. C# is merely a language and does not require the .NET Framework. The process of compiling it requires a compiler, which may or may not itself take a dependency on the .NET Framework (Microsoft's C# compiler does not -- it is written in native code). Your program will need to reference some assembly where types, classes, and methods can be found for your use. You can remove system.dll and mscorlib.dll from your references list and reference your own assemblies. So you can avoid dependencies on the .NET Framework if you really work at it. But in the end, unless you have a C# compiler that compiles programs to native code you still have a dependency on the CLR.
That's a very technical way of saying... almost nothing. But it answers your question. :) More practically useful however is how to get your C# programs to run with a minimum of dependencies. mkbundle from mono will actually let you compile it all into an .exe with virtually no dependencies.
But if you want to stick with the Microsoft .NET Framework, you can achieve a much lighter footprint and faster install of the dependencies you commonly need by using the Client profile of .NET 3.5 SP1. You can read about it here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc656912.aspx
Look at mkbundle using Mono.
It is now possible to compile C# to native code using Microsoft .NET Native:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn584397(v=vs.110).aspx
It automatically compiles the release version of apps that are written in managed code (C# or Visual Basic) and that target the .NET Framework and Windows 10 to native code.
...
For users of your apps, .NET Native offers these advantages:
•Fast execution times
•Consistently speedy startup times
•Low deployment and update costs
•Optimized app memory usage
This only works with Visual Studio .NET 2015.
Take a look at the .NET client profile.
This will allow you to package a minimum install on the client machine.. which will later be updated by windows update to the full framework.
This depends, of course, on your app only using libraries that are contained in the client profile ...
Some info here: http://blogs.windowsclient.net/trickster92/archive/2008/05/21/introducing-the-net-framework-client-profile.aspx
It's said it is possible, using 3rd-party tools such as http://www.remotesoft.com/linker/
Not possible. Your "compiled" C# application is a language which the .Net CLR interprets (should have said JITed, Reads the IL, compiles to native code, and then invokes the compiled native code) at runtime.
FYI .net 2.0 is a standard install on xp SP2 and vista, so you won't be paying that much of a penalty.
You could look into mono, but this still involves running some kind of framework on your target machine.
This dependency which unfortunately frequently breaks or is missing in the real world is a big reason why C# has not had a wider adoption. On the flip side most development does have dependencies.. look at C++ & Java for example.
I don't think we will really get away from these dependency issues anytime soon, so I recommend that if you want to use C#, that you make a wrapper for installation which checks for the .net framework version dependency you need, and if missing notify the user that they need this to run your app.
Some C# features are bound to interfaces of the .NET framework.
For example:
yield return requires the IEnumerable interface
using (x) {} requires the IDisposable interface