How to target Vista / 7 / 8 together with C# .Net

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Is there any way to target Vista / 7 / 8 at once?
I heard that Vista came with .Net 3.0 and Win 8 came with .Net 4.5
.Net 4.5 dose not support .Net 3.5 or older
Enabling .Net 3.5 in Win 8 control panel will not an option.
I need to make an EXE that people will just open and use (NO install).
Is there any way like placing a DLL around the EXE or other Idea?
Am using Visual studio 2012.

And what is the best .Net version to target in my case? .Net 2.0 or 3.0? I don't need to target XP, Only Vista or later OSs

Thank you

Posted 16-Mar-13 15:24pm

wedagedara

Updated 16-Mar-13 15:47pm

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-16T15:35:00

Solution 1

There is no such problem, really. The .NET projects target CPU instruction-set architecture (and it's the best to use "Any CPU" whenever possible, for maximum compatibility) and some .NET Framework version. If the target of this version is installed on the target OS, the .NET solution will work.

Of course, this is the case when the solution does not use any OS-specific tricks. It's the best to keep .NET code OS-agnostic, which is also pretty easy.

—SA

Posted 16-Mar-13 15:35pm

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov

Comments

wedagedara 16-Mar-13 21:46pm

Thank you,
And what is the best .Net version to target in my case? .Net 2.0 or 3.0?
I don't need to target XP, Only Vista or later OSs

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 16-Mar-13 23:11pm

If you have the Windows 2012, you can target any version available so far. I would advise to target .NET no earlier than 3.5. (Even though v.2.0 was practically the first really decent version, it lacks WPF and lambda expression, to list only the most important innovations.) I don't see why would you need to go with older versions of .NET. Installation of any version of the framework is free for the OS user. You should also understand that .NET versions are backward-compatible. If you install a later version of .NET, you would need to install only one version; assemblies targeted to older versions will be supported anyway.
—SA