What .NET Framework version should I ship with; 2, 3, 3.5? [closed]

Answer 1

I agree with EBGreen and Chris, but I want to add that you might want to consider testing your application against the newer versions of the framework and allow your application to run against those versions you deem to work well against (this can be done using some configuration trick, but unfortunately, I can't find reference to it). This way, your application could work against the version the client may already have installed.

I suggest this because:

1. New framework versions may give you a performance boost.
2. The client may already have another version installed on their computer and it would be a shame to, as you say, waste hard drive space.
3. You may want to run your application against a newer framework version sometime in the future and if your client already has that version and is running the current version of the application, there won't be an old framework on their computer.

Still, I'm lacking some information you may have, such as the means of distribution, the profiling of clients' machines, etc.

Answer 2

You should distribute your app with whatever version of .Net is the version you've done the most testing against. If you've been doing all your developing and testing in .Net 2.0, then ship with 2.0.

But you may owe it to your customers to test against 3.5 and ship with that, instead, for the sake of any bugs that have been fixed in the framework since 2.0 was released. The framework is already so large that there probably isn't any benefit to distributing an earlier version, even if it came before WCF, WPF, etc., unless you're paying bandwidth costs to distribute it, or the target device has limited storage space.

Answer 3

I agree that you should with what your App needs, but you should also prepare for what your apps will need in the future.

If you have a few spare cycles, you could migrate a separate branch of your apps in your SCM which is running with the 3.5 Runtime and when you actually need to upgrade, you have a working branch (Assuming that you keep it up-to-date with some bi-weekly merge).

Answer 4

I've found version 2.0 to be the easiest version to target and deploy since a lot of people have it installed already, If a sizable portion of your client base use Vista you might consider upgrading to 3.0. Versions above that nearly always require an install which can be a pain for some users.

Edit: The "framework version going out of support" argument holds no water since 3.0 is an extension of 2.0 and 3.5 is an extension of that. By definition 2.0 will be supported as long as 3.5 is. Version 1.1 is the only version that is a completely separate runtime and is no longer supported.

Answer 5

I always use the most up-to-date version of the Framework. This may be a small up-front burden on users, but the app has a much longer life between upgrades. That may or may not be important to you, but consider:

If you had shipped an application in 2005 using .NET 1.1, the framework your app runs on is now out of mainstream support, and may have unpatched security vulnerabilities, or other serious problems which Microsoft may not deal with, and which you cannot compensate for in your own code. Your only alternative in 2008 is to get your users to upgrade their framework version now. And, as we all know, getting users to update things in a timely fashion can be problematic.

Likewise, consider your situation in 2011. If you program for .NET 3.5 now, your app, as-shipped, will be viable longer. If you ship for .NET 2.0 now, you'll be in the position, in a few years' time, of having to convince your users to upgrade their framework (code which has no perceived benefit to them, remember) so that you can properly support this application.

Also, if you plan to implement 3.5-class features (LINQ to SQL next year, for example), it's in your interest to ship for 3.5 now, rather than 2.0, as it will make deployment later less of a problem for you.

Answer 6

If you are planning to upgrade to 3.5 SP1, you should consider using the New .NET Framework Client Profile Setup Package.

.NET 3.5 SP1 introduces a new setup package option for developers building .NET client applications called the ".NET Framework Client Profile". This provides a new setup installer that enables a smaller, faster, and simpler installation experience for .NET client applications on machines that do not already have the .NET Framework installed.

The .NET Framework Client Profile setup contains just those assemblies and files in the .NET Framework that are typically used for client application scenarios. For example: it includes Windows Forms, WPF, and WCF. It does not include ASP.NET and those libraries and components used primarily for server scenarios. We expect this setup package to be about 26MB in size, and it can be downloaded and installed much quicker than the full .NET Framework setup package.

The assemblies and APIs in the .NET Framework Client setup package are 100% identical to those in the full .NET Framework setup package (they are literally the same binaries). This means that applications can target both the client profile and full profile of .NET 3.5 SP1 (no recompilation required). All .NET applications that work using the .NET Client Profile setup automatically work with the full .NET Framework.