I have an application, which I develop in VS 2008 and I target .NET 3.
Unfortunately when I install on a clean computer with .NET 3, it crashes. And besides the usual TypeInitilisationError, I have no clue why.
Updating the same machine to .NET 3.5SP1 makes it run fine.
Is there something broken in VS2008 that prevents from telling me a more detailed error?
How can I be sure I don't use any of the newest classes of the framework?
It is true that I found myself using DropShadowEffect which belongs to 3SP1. I removed it.
But still...it does not work.
What am I doing wrong?
Have you tried to determine which version of the framework is installed on each computer. If you're using .Net 3.5 SP1 to compile the program it actually includes .Net 3.0 sp2 which has some extra features (MultiSelector class to name one) which are not available in .Net 3.0 sp1 which is the default install with .Net 3.0 download from Microsoft.
You can try here for some software that will help:
NetVersionCheck
EDIT:
Visual Studio won't tell you about any errors for this because everything seems fine with the version of .Net 3.0 that it's using. I ran into this problem using the WPF toolkit as it requires the MultiSelector class which didn't arrive until .Net 3.0 sp2. So, Jonathan, if you can show us the error output from your program on the 'Fresh' .Net 3.0 computer then we could probably tell you what you're using that is in .Net 3.0 sp2 that isn't supported in lower versions.
Also, I usually use VS2005 with programs that I want to run under a lower runtime than .Net 3.5sp1, but this really only applies to .Net 2.0 apps.
If we knew what components from .Net 3.0 that you're using, it would help as well!
Noah
Thanks for the answer.
Because of VS2008, on my dev computer i have the latest 3.5SP1.
But in Visual Studio i selected 3 as a target.
And to check i install on a clean computer with 3.0...
So your proposition do tells me which framework is installed, but does not tell me what in my program uses in the newest framework that is not present in 3.0.
Moreover, something must be broken in VS2008 as it should warm me for that...
I feel like this is a problem with VS 2008, but obviously MS feels differently.
VS 2008 comes with .NET 3.5, some .NET 3.0 service pack, and .NET 2.0 SP1. It can only detect whether you are using things that don't belong to a version that is installed on your machine, not whether you are conforming to some service pack. This means that if you target .NET 2.0, but install your software on a machine that does not have .NET 2.0 SP1, if you use anything specific to SP1 your application will fail when it tries to make the call.
The only way to detect this that I have seen is to inspect the changelist of the service packs or to target .NET 3.5. If .NET 3.5 is installed, so are the service packs that come with it. It's not a good solution, but it's the only one I've found.
Related
I am building a windows presentation form application. The issue I have is that my co-workers have different versions of .net installed on the desktops. If I build it on my machine which has .net version which is 4.6. When another person has a lower version of .net it fails. I can build the application multiple time with different version of .net but I would like to avoid that. So is there a way in Visual Studio to build a WPF that will work on multiple platforms and versions of .net?
You can change your target framework in the project properties (right click the project and select Properties):
Because higher .NET versions are backwards compatible with earlier versions, you can target a lower version that what is on your machine, though it means that you lose out on the newer apis.
So, for example, if you and your colleagues decide that .NET 4.0 is a good target, then having .NET 4.5 or .NET 4.0 will work for building and running the application.
For more information on Framework Targets, see:
What does it really mean to target a framework, and how do I maximize compatibility?
What is the effect of setting a “Target framework” in Visual Studio
I have created a WPF application, using Visual Studio 2012 running on Windows 8 that targets .NET 4. But, when I try to run the app on another machine, that runs Windows 7, the app cannot starts. The target machine has installed .NET 4, but the app cannot run on it. But when I install the .NET 4.5 on target machine, it works. I check the entire solution, and there is not any dependency to .NET 4.5. How is it possible? Any idea?
UPDATE: I'm using these packages:
Autofac.3.0.2
Autofac.WebApi.3.0.2
Caliburn.Micro.1.5.1
Caliburn.Micro.Autofac.1.5.0
EntityFramework.6.0.0-alpha3
gong-wpf-dragdrop.0.1.3.8
Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi.Client.4.0.30506.0
Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi.Core.4.0.20710.0
Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi.SelfHost.4.0.20918.0
Microsoft.Net.Http.2.0.20710.0
Newtonsoft.Json.5.0.6
System.Windows.Interactivity.WPF.2.0.20525
While all of them are targeting to .NET 4 in package.config file, is it any chance that one of them are using some .NET 4.5 features?
Please ensure that no reference assembly is targeted to or code contains references to 4.5 framework. Then it should works
Finally, I found the problem. I was compiling the project by (Any CPU) configuration. When I changed it to x86, the problem resolved.
I have a WPF project with one external library. Is it possible to make one executable file "*.exe" from this project to run on windows systems even without .net? and how to insert that library into .exe file?
You will need to have the .net framework installed on the clients pc. What this says is that since .Net has been preinstalled on Windows since XP SP1, you should target your application to the runtime that is available on the system you wish to install it on. And since you are targeting WPF you will need to make sure that you have available .net 3.5 or greater. You may want to look into the Client installation of the framework since it is smaller. And you may want to look at this Stackoverflow question
i.e. from above link
Windows .Net Framework
Win 7 SP1 4
win 7 3.5.1 ( can be updated to .Net Framework 4 through windows updates )
windows vista 3.0 ( can be updated to .Net Framework 4 through windows updates )
windows XP Sp 1 2.0
You must have .net installed to use a wpf application. You can use clickonce to make the install experience more friendly to the user, if he doesn't the right version of the .net framework installed.
As for the external third party library, see my answer here for the same issue.
I'm Trying to deploy my winforms project using installshield in order to make is available to be installed on other computers. My project is written under .net framework 3.5.
My question is : What version of .net package should be installed on the target machine in order to be able to run my project?
One thing to notice is that target machine is not connected to internet so I have to embed a standalone offline installer for .net framework.
Surely, with .Net framework 3.5 full redistributable package installed, my project runs fine. But it's ~200MB. Should I really install 200MB in order to run my ~10MB project on target machine?
one other option would be installing client redistributable package which I heard ~30MB. But I couldn't find any official release and am not sure if that's gonna work.
Any help would be appreciated.
You should deploy with the web installer so that it can determine what your client needs and download only those components. The full install is that big because it contains all variants of the framework for all possible systems (x86, x64, etc.).
This site from Scott Hanselman is an excellent resource on the matter of deploying .NET.
http://www.hanselman.com/smallestdotnet/
As it states on that site:
If you look for .NET Downloads on
Microsoft's site, it might look like
the .NET Framework is 200+ megs. It's
not. Those big downloads are the
Complete Offline Versions of every
version of the .NET Framework for
every kind of machine possible. The
big .NET download includes x86, x64,
and ia64. It includes .NET 2.0, 3.0,
and 3.5 code for all systems all in
one super-archive.
I've made a small tool application with Visual Studio 2010 which to distribute it, I zip these files from the Release folder:
Data
MainData.mdf
MainData_log.ldf
DataBackup.exe
DataBackup.exe.config
FluidKit.dll
then unzip them on the target machine (no installation).
When I run it on a Windows 7 machine with .NET 4 installed, it runs fine.
When I run it on a Vista machine with .NET 3.5 installed, it gives me this default error message:
In order to run this appication, you
need to install the following version
of .NET: v.4.0.21006 To learn how to
install this version, contact the
distributor of this application.
When I run it on an XP machine with .NET 3.0 installed, it gives me an error that doesn't that the application cannot start but doesn't mention installing .NET.
Is there anyway that I can intercept these messages to e.g. give a nice-looking, custom message with install instructions and a link to the .NET 4 download?
I think that the only solution is to make a small non-.NET application that checks if the .NET Framework is installed, and if so, launches your .NET application. For the framework detection part, see for example here: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/DetectDotNet.aspx
Check out the Application.DispatcherUnhandledException Event... maybe you could globally catch the exception and inform your user in there about having to install .NET 4.0. Probably this can help you determine what .NET platform versions are installed, and maybe even avoid using the .NET 4 features if you see that the client machine does not have it.