Using .NET Programmable Applications Works on Older Machines

Question

Interestingly, does anyone know how to determine which parts of the .NET platform need to be installed in order to get the cerftain functions running on older machines. Is there a way to install them using my application without installing the entire .NET platform?

Answer 1

You can use Mono , the open source implementation of the .NET platform. The mono installer is smaller than the .NET installer. In addition, Mono works with versions of Windows older than XP.

In Mono, you can use Linker to link only a small subset of the .NET framework that you need with your application.

The disadvantage is that Mono does not implement the entire .NET platform, at the moment it is compatible only with version 2.0 and parts 3.0. Anyway, there is a tool called MoMa that tells you how compatible your application is with Mono.

Answer 2

How old are these old cars? It looks like .NET 2.0 can be installed on Win98 computers, see System Requirements http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480241.aspx .

Answer 3

Well, VMWare ThinApp (formerly called Thinstall) can help you - but I did not use it myself, and I would be a little afraid to run .NET applications on anything other than a real .NET installation.

If you use part of the framework, you might be interested in the .NET 3.5 client profile , which is at least somewhat smaller than the full structure - but, of course, it may not contain everything you need ...

Answer 4

You can generate your own code from C # with sufficient time and / or money. I've never had to deal with this much, but Xenocode and Salamander can generate their own code and / or statically link frame assemblies to your code to work without installing FX.

I don’t think that I will do it easily, though ... Any machine that cannot work even on Windows 98 is not what I want to write managed code on.

Answer 5

As far as I know, this is not possible, you must completely install the .NET Framework runtime for them to work. Trying to put it together just doesn't seem like a good idea at all, in my opinion.