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423

answers:

2

After watching in horror as the .NET framework 3.5 SP1 bloated to whopping 231 MB I was amazed to see that .NET Framework 4 Full (x86) is only 35 MB and client profile just 29 MB.

My question is if .NET Framework 4 is in any way dependent on previous versions of the framework being installed on the client machine or if my users will have to download only 29 (or 35) MB if I develop a Winforms or WPF desktop application in VS 2010 targeting .NET Framework version 4.0?

Edit:

Wikipedia concurs with the answers:

Some developers have expressed concerns about the large size of .NET framework runtime installers for end-users. The size is around 54 MB for .NET 3.0, 197 MB for .NET 3.5, and 250 MB for .NET 3.5 SP1 (while using web installer the typical download for Windows XP is around 50 MB, for Windows Vista - 20 MB). The size issue is partially solved with .NET 4 installer (x86 + x64) being 54 MB and not embedding full runtime installation packages for previous versions.

+2  A: 

A .NET 4.0 application is in no way dependent on previous versions of the framework being installed. .NET 4.0 is completely free-standing and does not require any other version of the framework to work.

Andrew Hare
If you provide a link to some microsoft page where this is officially stated I'll immediately accept your answer... I was not able to find it, that is why I asked here...
kzen
@kzen For reference, the last free standing version of the .Net Framework was 2.0. The 3.0 and 3.5 releases built upon 2.0 which is why they needed to install each "version".
Rangoric
+1  A: 

.NET 4.0 targets a higher version of the CLR, so no; there is no dependence.

Pierreten