Deployment of NET 2.0 application - installing silently

[Toma Catalin]

Hello. I need to deploy an application written in NET 2.0. My first problem
is that I need to install the framework silentlly. I already found how to do
this, but I still have some questions:

1. How to I know for sure if the client has or not the framework.
2. If the client has a higher version, do I need to install 2.0(does the app
work better on the version it was built with?).
3. Do if have to write in the app config file that it should use a higher
version if it doesn't have 2.0? Or it does this automaticaly

I written 2 tests for the first question. The first one checks the registry
for a key Software\\Microsoft\\NET Framework Setup\\NDP\\v2.0.50727 and the
second test is running an console application written in .NET that returns a
number.What if the client has version 1.1...do I need to write an .NET app
that uses something specific to 2.0?

If someone can help me...thanks, I don't know much about deploying
applications.

 

[Phil Wilson]

Since you didn't say what silent method you found, it's not clear whether
you need to do any of the things you mention, but:

1) Don't bother. Just run dotnetfx /q and if it's already installed it will
just exit.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms994349.aspx

2) Frameworks are side by side - they can all be on the system at the same
time, so if you developed with VS 2005 then ship the 2.0 FW resist.

3) No, not if you do 2.

 

[Toma Catalin]

Thanks for your answers, but I still have on more question. As I understand,
if the client has, for example only .NET 3.0 installed, my application will
work. But dotnetfx will run,because it does not have 2.0 ? I would like to
avoid this, as the deployment should not take very long to download and
install. Is their any way to find out, before I download dotnefx, if it has a
version equal or higher than 2.0 ?

 

[Marc Gravell]

..NET 3.0 is an extension to 2.0; if they have 3.0 they have 2.0;
likewise if they have 3.5 they have 3.0

However, this is not true of 1.1 ;-p

Marc

 

[Toma Catalin]

Hey,thanks, I didn't know it was an extension. I think the easiest way is
making a setup project and add .net to the dependecies. Thanks for your
answers.