Combining .NET into the installer

Question

Rather, you (or your clients) will download the 1mb installer and perhaps get a request to download and install .NET or a 23 MB installer and you should never even know what .NET is?

Chris

Answer 1

Can you determine if the framework is installed at boot time and maintain the appropriate installer? Thus, a user who does not have one is not punished, and a user who does not have one gets a full installation.

On the side, our application is a small download and dynamically loads the frameworks it needs, but we are not aimed at a “commercial” audience. Our many more applications are in a niche, so your YMMV.

Answer 2

I would recommend installing the 1mb installer or "bootstrapper". If you do not go to the fore, most Windows machines already have 2.0 installed there, and most users usually get an application that downloads and installs quickly.

Answer 3

Second. The client wants everything to work without placing a hand.

Answer 4

Usually I find that it’s becoming less and less important to connect the .NET platform with my applications. At least for 2.0, since it is installed most often.

I would say that for 3.5, since it is not necessarily installed, it might be better to enable this with a download for ease of use.

Answer 5

While I personally hate downloaders that are only 0.5 MB, which download the actual installable content later, because you cannot archive the actual downloadable installation files, I have to say that in this case I prefer the 1 MB installer. The .Net runtime is common enough to be found on most computers. And if this is not the case, it should come directly from Microsoft, and not try to save the updated version of .Net framework in your installer. Another option that is common among Java-IDEs such as Eclipse and Netbeans is to have both a version that does not ship with J2SDK and a version that includes an updated version of J2SDK.

Answer 6

I think Adobe Acrobat, which has a 1/2 Mb installer download to download a much larger program. Acrobat is there as one of the busiest software packages, and they are still forced to reduce the size of the bootstrap. Microsoft also takes this approach for some of its larger packages.

However, the case with both examples is that they provide a much more pleasant experience when downloading the full application than the standard Visual Studio installation packages allow you to download the framework.

Answer 7

I would prefer that one installation put one and exactly one piece of software on my machine. When we use our clients, we want to be able to independently control the installation of dependencies.

EDIT: Please note that I am talking about a corporate environment where we centrally manage the deployment of software for our customers. I also feel this way for myself, but I would put myself as a powerful user, and I can see the counter argument for the regular user Joe.

Answer 8

I personally would rather know that he installed .net.

Most non-technical people do not care and will be annoyed by the installer who asks them to click more time than necessary (the thought process will go “Install.net? Whats.net? You ask me because I have to install it, or because I don’t should? Allows you to choose the random option "with many people."

Answer 9

Scott Hanselman recently posted a blog post in which he talked about the union of the .net framework. It should also be noted that .net 2.0 was included in Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), so a modern computer should have at least

Answer 10

Document the dependencies of the structure and provide the user with additional means for installing it, if they do not already have it during the installation process. This is especially important if you are shipping online anyway. If you send to a CD / DVD, be sure to include the code distributed with your code if the user does not have access to it through the network.

Answer 11

In any case, make sure you warn the user if you go to the download option. Nothing is more annoying than being so happy that the new program that you install on your machine that is not connected to the Internet is so small and then finds out that you didn’t quite ...

Answer 12

Check smallestdotnet as well as new client profile material (depending on your version)