How can I check what objects, tools, variables, anything... are used from .NET 2.0 in a C# application.
How can I get a C# application run without .NET 2.0 ?
UPDATE:
sorry, I didn't clarify enought. Here's my situation: I have developed a pretty simple application in C#: embeded browser which displayes static webpages with an option of searching inside of these html pages. I'm using simple textbox, buttons components for this.
The application will be distribuited for people wich have very old PCs, even with windows 95. I would like the app to be runable on it, or at least on win 98, without telling the people to install .NET 2.0, as the users don;t really have PC usage skills :) .
I'm using a dataGridView as well.
You can have a look at this : http://www.remotesoft.com/linker/
"The mini-deployment tool puts
together the minimum set of CLR
runtime files and dependent assemblies
that can be simply copied to a single
folder on a target machine, and your
application runs as if the whole
framework is installed. Since the
installation is isolated into a single
folder, there will be no conflicts
with future .NET installation. When
linking is used for the dependent
assemblies, it will further reduce the
file size."
You may need to clarify a bit more.. do you want the app to run without .Net at all? Or you want it to run in .Net 3.5 without .net 2.0 bits?
If its the latter, then simply don't reference assemblies that are compiled in .net 2.0 (check the properties on the reference you have added). If its the former, then its really not feasable. Yes its possible, but it means deploying parts of the framework with your app, but then, you'd be deploying all the bits, including the 2.0 bits.
Your're question really needs more information though, it doesn't make much sense currently. Sorry. =)
To make sure it runs without .NET 2.0, compile it with the .NET 1.1 compiler.
But this seems like not a good idea. I'd recommend revisiting your requirements.
Win98 wasn't shipped with .NET. Using .NET v1.1 won't get you much more platform penetration than .NET 2.0, if any.
IT looks like windows 98 supports the .net framework. See this answer for details:
OS Compatibility for various .NET Framework versions
You cannot run a .NET application (i.e., that uses the CLR) if you haven't installed the corresponding .NET Framework binaries (i.e., that contains the CLR) directly or indirectly.
Period.
Related
I taught myself coding, and I'm not sure if this is possible.
Neither do i know if what I ask here goes by some name (e.g.: "What you ask is called xxxxxx"). I couldn't find anything on this topic (but did find some upgrade articles, which is not exactly what I want, so please excuse me if this sounds like a NOOB question to hardcore coders; I'm a beginner).
I had a small project that relied on .NET 2.0 because of inclusion of some external libraries. The software worked well, but now it needs added functionality; things that would be much more easy to program under .NET 4.0 or 4.5.
However, that included external library isn't at that .NET level, so now I wonder: can a project have multiple .NET versions ?
I'm not sure but was thinking also perhaps I only write my new function as a dll that depends on .NET 4.5, in which I write my public functions in a different project, then later include that final dll in my prj that depends on .NET 2.0... not sure if this would be the way to go though.
Yes, you can include .NET 2 assemblies into a .NET 4 or .NET 4.5 project (or any version if you will). Including a .NET 4 assembly in a .NET 2 project won't work.
If you want to use new features in a base project, you need to upgrade all projects that rely on it. Make sure that the entire tree supports .NET 4 then (for example Office add-ins, or other related software you might use).
An exception is the use of mixed-mode assemblies (assemblies that use both .NET and unmanaged code), which are more tight to the CLR and they might cause problems due to the activity policy (MSDN).
You can only use one .NET version, and that's the version that your primary application requires (or is configured) to use. However, .NET is largely backwards compatible with older versions and can often run older assemblies unchanged in newer versions of the framework.
So even though your app may be running .NET 4 or 4.5, you can use assemblies (or libraries) that were written for .NET 2 (although some restrictions may apply, as others have mentioned). Those assemblies just run under the 4.5 CLR (assuming there are no backwards compatibility issues with them), which is rare but does happen).
But the key to remember, your running application must be at the highest version of any contained assemblies. Meaning, if you have 4.5 assemblies, you can't run your app as a 2.0 app. It must be the other way around.
It sounds like you are looking for Side-by-side execution, especially In-Process Side-by-Side execution:
In-Process Side-by-Side execution
yes, you can include. that's what CLS Do
If you want to use new features in a base project, you need to upgrade all projects that based on it.
I have created a C# 2010 application and now when I install it on user application it asks for complete dot net framework. Is it possible if I can only put required dll files with my application instead of installing complete dot net framework on user machine ?
No it is not possible
The .NET framework is more than just assembly to copy on the target computer. It is a more complex infrastructure that interact with the OS when an executable is loaded and, if it contains IL instruction, it compile it just in time in order to have it running. So non chanches in order to me to have it working without a .NET framework setup, that can be done in a separate step, or by creating a Setup for your app with the proper framework version indicated as a prerequisite.
An overview of the framework can be found here, but many more others are available in the net, you should read it to understand why is not a just matter of functions you need or not.
You may choose to target .NET Framework Client Profile. That would decrease download size of .NET files. See this link for more details on subject: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc656912.aspx#targeting_the_net_framework_client_profile
No, this is not possible. In order to install and run an application targeting the .NET Framework, the user must have the appropriate version of the .NET Framework installed on his/her computer.
If you want to make things easier, you should distribute your application with a setup program that ensures the .NET Framework is automatically installed along with your app. There's no reason the user should have to download and install the .NET Framework themselves. You can even create a setup program right from Visual Studio, so there's no excuse not to use one. It also makes managing dependencies and versioning conflicts much easier.
If you're really worried about the size of your dependencies and are targeting .NET 4.0, you can require only the Client Profile, which is a subset of the .NET Framework optimized for client applications. You'll have to set your project's Properties to target the .NET 4.0 Client Profile, and ensure that you're not using any of the assemblies it omits.
I hardly recommend wasting too much time on this, though. At last count, the Client Profile was only about 15–16% smaller than the full version—not an amount that makes much difference on the fast Internet connections found in most parts of the world today. And even less of a problem if you distribute on real media.
If you're absolutely dead-set on delivering an application without any dependencies (as comments to other answers suggest), you've got a hard road ahead of you. For starters, you'll need to drop .NET and C# entirely, and switch instead to an unmanaged language like C or C++. That's a very different programming environment than C#. Even if you're the best C# programmer in the world, there's going to be a significant learning curve to pick up C++.
And that still doesn't solve all of your problems. C++ applications compiled using a modern version of Visual Studio will still require that the appropriate version of the C Runtime Library be installed on the user's machine. This is, of course, a much smaller package than the entire .NET Framework, but you can't count on it always being there, so you'll need to install it along with your application.
Moreover, unlike the .NET Framework (which has WinForms, WPF, Silverlight, etc.) there is no GUI library bundled with C++. And if you choose any GUI library other than the native platform API (for example, Qt, which is quite popular for reasons that I still find inexplicable), that gives you an additional dependency. You mention Google's applications a couple of times as a model. Google Chrome targets the Win32 API directly and has written a bunch of their own code to draw their custom GUI on top of that base framework. That's really the only way you're going to eliminate dependencies entirely. And delay your app to market for a significant period of time.
I have created a new application on C# 2010. After creating a Setup file I came to know that for installation purposes user must have a dot net framework. Is there any way I can get rid of installing dot net framework on a user computer. Each time I try to install my application on the user computer it redirects to install the dot net framework. Any suggestion?
Well that's a problem; because of the design of .NET applications.
Here's some references for you:
Visual C#
"C# (pronounced "C sharp") is a programming language that is designed for building a variety of applications that run on the .NET Framework." [first sentence]
Intro to C# and .NET
As the comments on the question attempt to imply, the .NET Framework is required in order to execute .NET applications.
You have two choices, really:
Require that users have the .NET Framework installed. This is the most common choice, for reasons that will become clear in a moment. It's not unheard-of to have such requirements. It's similar to requiring that a user have Windows installed in order to run your Windows application.
Distribute the .NET Framework with your application installer. This is possible, but less often used because the .NET Framework is large compared to the average application. However, if you must do this, then the option is at least available. Some quick Googling brought me to this helpful blog post.
This isn't possible. C# is built on the .NET framework, so any C# app requires that a version of .NET be available. At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework#History, you can see what .NET framework versions are available in various versions of Windows. The short story is that XP doesn't include anything, Vista includes 3.0, and Windows 7 includes 3.5. If you build for one of these versions, then on those OSes, your users won't need to install anything extra. Using the Client Profile instead of the full .NET can also help reduce or eliminate installs your users will need to do.
Unfortunately No. Its not possible.
To explain it simple terms.
Suppose if you have written only 1 Line of code where you would have simply declared an int variable, who will tell OS that it should create a space in memory?
That framework does exactly that creates basic environment to run your app in a System.
OOPs says about Real-world modeling and Relationships, so let me give you one from it.
Think yourself to be the C# app and Mother Nature/Environment(Greenry) to be .Net Environment.(.Net is called an Environment)
Can you survive without mother nature? From first second that you are in this world, you breathe. Who provides you that oxygen. MOTHER NATURE
While creating installation bundle you can add dot net frame work exe file as prerequisites, then while installing your application it can check whether the system having .net framework or not. if it is not installed it your application can install the frame work.
When you are using managed languages to writing applications you agreed to use their vm, c# codes compiles to IL which needs dot net framework for executing.
.net framework by default exists on windows 7,8,8.1 and 10 and I don't think that this is a challenge.
but if you insist on it so there is a way by using Mono, just remove features that does not support in mono from your project.
first install mono and cygwin, then copy your exe and mono.dll file to a folder, be sure that your file name is not long because in some cases bundling faild,now you can start bundling using mkbundle command.
after bundling finished you have a exe file that can run without .net framework
hope this help you
I have the same issue and want the app to setup using the existing dot net framework version (4.6), because the app setup requires 4.7.2 version that the PC doesn't meet the requirements
I want to develop a small utility for windows and I prefer doing that in c# because it is easier (I'm a java developer).
The utility will be available for download by many people and I assume some of them will not have the .net framework installed (is this assumption correct, say I target win xp and above?)
My question is: can a c# application be compiled in a way that it will not require the .net framework installed?
Normally, you will need the .NET Framework being installed on the target system. There is no simple way around that.
However, certain third-party tools such as Xenocode or Salamander allow you to create stand-alone applications. See this related question:
Is there some way to compile a .NET application to native code?
As these solutions are not straight-forward and require commercial products I would recommend you to create a simple Visual Studio Setup and Deployment project. In the properties of the project you should include the .NET Framework as a pre-requisite. The setup.exe created will then automatically download and install the .NET Framework prior to installing your application.
No, it will need the .Net framework installed. Note though that you will need only the redistributable version, not the SDK.
A minor aside - but in this scenario, consider developing the utility in Silverlight - it has a much smaller footprint and is supported on a number of operating systems. This might allow you to get the coverage including people who don't already have .NET.
If you need "normal" .NET, then "Client Profile" is perhaps an option.
You can probably also include the .net framework installer in your application.
In a related question, Can you compile C# without using the .Net framework?, it's mentioned you could do this using mkbundle from mono. I haven't tried it myself so I can't comment on if it's the way you should go, but you may want to consider it.
I can't seem to get my application up and running on my dev server and I'm not sure why.
I have compiled my code in VS 2008 with a target framework of 3.5. I am using 3.5 mainly because I have implemented LINQ rather extensively. Compiling and runs local without any problems.
The hang up is that my server only has the 2.0 .Net framework and upgrading to 3.5 is apparently not going to happen.
I was under the impression after doing some research that as long as I was trying to execute compiled code the server would not need 3.5 installed.
Today I am trying to publish to the server and I can't get past this error in my WEB.CONFIG
Configuration Error
Parser Error Message: Child nodes not allowed.
providerOption name="CompilerVersion" value="v3.5"/
EDIT ADD ON QUESTION:
I have seen some posts about possibly setting my references to "copy local" which might allow me to run on the 2.0 server. Thoughts?
You are right in that 3.5 runs on the 2.0 CLR, but 3.5 contains libraries and if you have used any of those, you're out of luck unless you install 3.5 on that server.
There are plenty of options for a 3.5 program to not run correctly on only 2.0, so I'd consider downgrading the program, or upgrading the server.
Note regarding copy local. Even if you copy all the 3.5 libraries that your app uses, there is no guarantee it'll work and most likely it won't. Even so, distributing the libraries with your app is expressively prohibited by the .NET license.
Since you have stated you use LINQ, the only legal way to get your app running is to install the 3.5 license.
Or, you can rewrite your app using only 2.0.
I'm pretty sure that LINQ is one of the things that makes 3.5 a requirement. A lot of the other things, like lambda expressions etc. are just compiler trickery.
Because System.Linq is a 3.5 feature, the framework is required to be that version.
A good way to determine would be to change the target framework to 2.0 and see if it builds.
Code compiled against 3.0 or 3.5 may run on the 2.0 framework, but only if you do not use any libraries that are specific to the 3.0+ framework. One good way to find what's causing your code to fail is to switch your target to 2.0 and change things so that it compiles. Since one of your target installations is .NET 2.0, you are going to have to write .NET 2.0 code; this is not unique to .NET. In the past, writing an application that executed in both Win95 and WinNT involved extra work for the developer to carefully make sure the appropriate API was used.
Technically, 3.5-targetted code can run on 2.0 with no problems, but there's some gotchas you have to watch for. If anything accesses something that is unavailable in .NET 2.0, that will fail. This doesn't happen when the application starts, it happens when the application tries to make the call. I tested this by making a console application that does a little bit of output, then tries to display a WPF window. The output is made, but the application throws an exception when it tries to display the window on a machine with nothing but .NET 2.0.
Another gotcha is that VS 2008 actually comes with the .NET Framework 2.0 SP1, and there are a few types and methods in SP1 that are not in the normal 2.0 Framework. Visual Studio will not flag these methods as unsafe.
Finally, if this is a web application, the default web.config file for 3.5-targeted projects is very different than the web.config file for 2.0-targeted projects. Make sure you're distributing a compatible web.config. This is likely the problem you are encountering. A cheap workaround might be to change your target to .NET 2.0, copy that web.config, and use it in this case. Keep in mind that if you are using any 3.0+-specific language features or types your code will still fail, but this should get you past the web.config.
You're not going to be able to run code targetted to 3.5 on the server unless you get 3.5 installed on it.
The problem isn't your code, rather that the required libraries will be missing.
This is not possible. Although the CLR has not changed (like it did between v1.1 and v2.0) The libraries have. You cannot run a 3.5 app that doesn't have the 3.5 fraework installed. All of the Linq features are made possible by the 3.5 framework.
One error is in Web.Config. The published Web.Config is setup to allow compilation from .NET 3.5, which is the reason it includes build provider information.
Beyond that, your code won't run. By using LINQ, you're referencing assemblies that don't exist in .NET 2.0.
I was just going to leave a comment by my rep is not quite there. I agree with the crowd so far and believe that lassevk's answer is the best so please give him the rep for that. One this I wanted you to know about though is that once you install 3.5 on your IIS server (6 or better). When you go to the IIS Manager and right click on your website to access the ASP.Net tab. You will see AFTER the install of the 3.5 Framework that there is no 3.5 option available. It will still show it as 2.0.50727. Don't worry about that, it will still work just fine. Because of this inconsistence (thanks Microsoft) some confusion has been caused. Actually I think this is why you may have thought that 2.0 would run your 3.5 code just fine. Hope this helps and anyone please edit this so it makes more sense.
You can may use of some C# 3 features whilst targeting .NET 2.0. Its the language features which by the time its compilied to IL will run on the 2.0 CLR regardless of whether that CLR is part of a 2.0 or higher framework install.
Hence you can use anonymous types, extension methods and Lambda expressions but as soon as you do things like LINQ you then need external libraries that are part of 3.5
If you are only doing LINQ to Object you could add the LINQBridge to your distribution.
Another problem you can run into is if you are shipping a web application that includes the source code, such as code behind files, in line code and .cs in the App_Code folder.
You can end up shipping C# source code which compiles on the developement machine with C# 3 compilier present but fails to compile on a server only equiped with C# 2. In this case you can't use any new language features either.
What's worse is that specifing the .NET 2.0 framework as the target in the Visual Studio doesn't stop you using C# 3 language features. You get no warnings that such syntax will not compile on a 2.0 machine.
Hence if you are shipping such a web app, you'll need to compile pretty much everything first.
You can just copy over the 3.5 dlls onto the server. You can absolutely run 3.5 code on a 2.0 server.