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Deploying the .NET Framework

Someone asked me this week for some best practices around deploying the .NET Framework on client machines.

 

Unfortunately I don’t have a ton of experience with this. For the last big application I work on (Terrarium) we decided to simply pre-req’ed the right version of the .NET Framework. I was able to find a couple of articles on MSDN, but somehow I think there is more to be said here:

https://www.msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnnetdep/html/dotnetframedepguid.asp

https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpguide/html/cpcondistributingdotnetfxexeusingelectronicsoftwaredistributiontool.asp

I’d love to hear your experiences on deploying the .NET Framework, what works and what doesn’t?

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 07, 2004
    well this is based on posts I have read and commented to on GDN.com:

    Problem: Mr X wrote a small app that he wants to make a shareware download for.
    the .Net exe and install fit on 1-5 megs.

    but now he has to get possible customers to download an install the 20 meg runtime.

    Mr X asks why he can't link in just the bits he needs.

    Mr X then says "the heck with this I'm going back to [other tool here]"

    different forms of this are posted at least once a month on GDN.
  • Anonymous
    February 07, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    February 08, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    February 08, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    February 08, 2004
    The installer should be able to download and install the (latest/needed) version of the Framework.
    Is it that hard?
  • Anonymous
    February 08, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    February 09, 2004
    Moo, please lay off the profanity. It's not necessary; you make some good points.
  • Anonymous
    February 09, 2004
    We deploy .NET 1.1 as part of a large shrink wrapped product.

    We found a couple of minor problems:

    1. .NET 1.1 wants to install ASP.NET even on machines where IIS is not present or cannot be present (e.g. XP HOME). This is a problem because ASP.NET creates a debugging user that stops autologin for XP Home customers. The installer should detect when IIS is not available and not install stuff that will never be used.

    2. .NET 1.1 uninstall is too thorough and pulls out mscoree.dll from the system32 directory. This is a problem because if a user runs a managed application afterwards they will get a cryptic error message. If the installer left mscoree.dll on the machine the error message would be more pleasant: "This application requires the .NET framework v1.1 bla bla"

    Apart from this the setup is relatively painless.

    MSI 2.0 or 3.0 added some assembly support but they still don't support ngen or interop assembly registration. I wrote custom actions to do this but I suppose these should be part of the platform.

    Albert
  • Anonymous
    February 10, 2004
    This is all good feedback. I have gotten it to the right folks on the product team. Thanks!
  • Anonymous
    February 18, 2004

    We installed the .Net Framework on 3500 machines no problem.