Will there be any releases of the WinForms components compiled against CLR 4?If not in the plans yet, could it please be added to?
I think this is not the same as it was with 3.5 over 2 discussion, where a customer would have .NET 2 installed as a prerequisite of 3.5 anyway.
Thanks,
caco
As it stands there is no reason that one cannot use the CLR2 compiled assemblies in a CLR4 targeted application. This does not require the presence of CLR2. Creating a set of assemblies just to say they are compiled against CLR4 would only increase the download size for no benefit. Could you tell me what benefit you see for compiling against CLR4?
Note the reason there weren't CLR3.5 specific assemblies is because 3.0 and 3.5 were simply additions to the core CLR and therefore a version that was compiled against those versions wasn't required.
Well, I'd assume that assemblies compiled against CLR 4 would make use of newer features, such as LINQ and PLINQ for instance. I also think that it is best practice to try and keep assemblies compiled against same CLR, even if CLR 4 allows side-by-side and even running CLR2s with manifests.
Thanks for the prompt reply thou.
Regards,
Andrew, thank you for your prompt reply.
Of course just recompiling against a different CLR won't add its new features, what I meant is a CLR 4 compile USING those new features. I understand there's nothing regarding that on the pipeline for the WinForms components then..
My only concern with that specific assemblies for specific features requiring CLR 4 (or 3/3.5 for that matter), is that things like the Infragistics2/3.Excel will be back. I'm aware that in 2010.2 you finally introduced the "Version-Free assemblies" thou..
Anyway, thank you for the prompt answers!
Compiling against the CLR 4 does not add use of new features added to the framework. If you have suggestions about CLR features that you would like to see specific support for (e.g. support for iqueryable in wingrid) I would recommend submitting a suggestion for that feature.
With regards to using CLR 2 compiled assemblies, this does not require any form of manifest. That would only be needed if you created a CLR 2 compiled Exe and wanted ensure or prevent the use of certain framework versions (e.g. to allow being run under the clr4 when that version is present). A CLR 4 compiled exe can use CLR 2 targetted assemblies without any manifest. That is why the VS 2010 add references dialog includes CLR 2 and CLR 4 compiled assemblies. Since there are no members in the CLR4 being used, there is no need to have an identical copy of the assemblies. When there are features requested (and implemented) that require use of later versions of the framework then I would think we would create CLR 4 specific assemblies.