Creating an Installation for .NET Shareware applications

  • Thread starter Thread starter Allen
  • Start date Start date
A

Allen

We create and sell shareware applications. In order for us to be successful
at this, we need the download to be less than 10MB. Is it possible to create
a .NET installation that will not require the huge dotnetfx.exe? Perhaps
the operating systems are now including this?
 
Allen,

None of the current Microsoft operating system ship with the .NET Framework built in and it is also not included as part of any service packs. It has to be specifically downloaded from the Microsoft website and installed by an end user. If a user is running Automatic Updates it appears in the list of items that are available for install if it is not already present on the system, but it isn't a critical update component so has to be manually selected for download and installation.

If you create your setup packages from within VS.NET then there an automatic condition is built in that informs the user they need to download and install the .NET Framework if it is not already installed. Realistically though, this will only be an issue for people who are on a 56K dial-up connection as they may be put off by having to download a 24Mb .NET Framework before they can use your apps but that said, there isn't really a lot you can do about this.

Gary
 
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