Making sure C# program can run on machine with only .Net v2

Question

I'm using VS 2005 Standard SP1, with .Net 3.5 SP1 installed on XP.
The client machines only have .Net 2.0.50727 installed (also on XP).
How can I tell the compiler to reject any classes or methods that are not available in .Net 2?

Answer 1

In Visual Studio 2005 this is not possible because it simply doesn't know about .Net 3.5. Visual Studio 2008 is the first version which understands .Net 3.5.

The best way to make sure you don't use any classes defined in 3.5 is to do the following

• Don't reference any DLL's from 3.5 (System.Core,System.Xml.Linq,etc ...)
• Run the FxCop rule which spots for 3.5 violations in 2.0 projects. This was initially added to Visual Studio 2008 but I don't see a reason you couldn't use it in a 2005 project if you installed the latest FxCop

Here is a link to a blog article about the FxCop rule I was talking about.

• http://blogs.msdn.com/kcwalina/archive/2007/10/02/Multi_2D00_TargetingAndFxCop.aspx

The article does talk about running it against VS2008. But I don't immediately see a reason it couldn't be used in VS2005. But I don't have an install handy to test it on.