Miffed .NET Framework Client Profile

Miffed@

As .NET inflates, deployment of client applications has become an issue. The .NET client profile has come to the rescue, so a user only has to install this 28MB client profile, instead of .NET 2.0, 3.0, 3.5 and all the service packs. This reduces the install size from 500MB+ (on XP) to just 28 MB. The install size on an XP machine is about 53 MB. Sweet!

The only problem is if you want to create an install CD for your Winforms or WPF application you cannot. It is designed to be installed over the internet. Should you want to install it locally, you have to go through the tedium of creating a webserver etc. A lot of people are going to be annoyed at this because it introduces a dependency on the internet, for their application to run. Quite why things must be this way, is all but a mystery to me?

Oh FFS you must be joking. And if you're not joking I hope you're wrong.

That is the stupidest thing I have heard in a while, (even worse than when the sync framework neglected mobile devices).

Almost all of my target machines will have no connection to the internet, and everyone complains how long our software takes to install (They don't realise that the 40+ minutes is taken up with all the microsoft crap, and then about 30 seconds for my app to deploy)

I was hoping the client profile stuff would solve this one....


 Gues that's my fault for thinking that they would have thought it through.

jh71283 said:

Oh FFS you must be joking. And if you're not joking I hope you're wrong.

That is the stupidest thing I have heard in a while, (even worse than when the sync framework neglected mobile devices).

Almost all of my target machines will have no connection to the internet, and everyone complains how long our software takes to install (They don't realise that the 40+ minutes is taken up with all the microsoft crap, and then about 30 seconds for my app to deploy)

I was hoping the client profile stuff would solve this one....


 Gues that's my fault for thinking that they would have thought it through.

But the whole point of having a client profile version in the first place was to avoid users having to do large downloads to install a single application. If you're installing off a CD then you can easily include the full framework installer. What's the problem again?

Even better - the client profile is all but useless on Vista. Vista will still need the full install, due to it already having .Net 3.5.


In short, if you have any version of the .Net Framework 2.0 onwards installed, the client profile will not install, and you will require the full framework.


So, instead of cutting down the size of our setup deploymants, this potentially increases them, because (if we find a way) we will not only have to include the 28Mb client profile, but we will also need to carry the full .Net 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5 runtimes, just in case the target machine happens to already have the framework (which, thanks to windows update, it pretty likely)


So exactly where is this client profile going to be useful?

Deployment Guide said:

As is illustrated in the preceding table, the Client Profile deployment is focused on Windows XP SP2+ with No Framework components installed

Well that scenario is getting rarer and rarer, thanks to there being no way of buying XP SP2 any more, and windows update is pushing .net 2.0 onto the machines anyway, so you have a very tiny opening in which the client profile is of any use - that being directly after XP SP2 has been installed, and before the windows updates are applied.


Oh well...

AndyC said:

jh71283 said:

*snip*

But the whole point of having a client profile version in the first place was to avoid users having to do large downloads to install a single application. If you're installing off a CD then you can easily include the full framework installer. What's the problem again?

AndyC said:

What's the problem again?

Installation time.

Net 3.0 upwards just take a silly amount of time to install, which gives the end user a negative impression of our software out of the box..


it's not the best start.

AndyC said:

jh71283 said:

*snip*

But the whole point of having a client profile version in the first place was to avoid users having to do large downloads to install a single application. If you're installing off a CD then you can easily include the full framework installer. What's the problem again?

Imagine you have a Winforms or WPF application written today and complete and ready to deploy. All WPF applications will be 3.5 SP1 because of the performance improvements!

To install this application on XP you need to install .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5 and all their service packs. This is a 500MB+ install, plus it must be installed sequentially, i.e. one after another. Worse still over the internet where connections are variable.

The client profile only has the client .dlls and omits ASP.NET, WCF, WWF for example so is a sweet 28MB download (and it installs once). The full  install size is 53 MB - a tenth (at least) of what it was previous. If you ask an IT department to deploy your application and they have to install 3 seperate frameworks, and then your app, they will tell you to hop it. Think of deploying this on 500 machines as an IT head.

That is what the problem is.

vesuvius said:

AndyC said:

*snip*

Imagine you have a Winforms or WPF application written today and complete and ready to deploy. All WPF applications will be 3.5 SP1 because of the performance improvements!

To install this application on XP you need to install .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5 and all their service packs. This is a 500MB+ install, plus it must be installed sequentially, i.e. one after another. Worse still over the internet where connections are variable.

The client profile only has the client .dlls and omits ASP.NET, WCF, WWF for example so is a sweet 28MB download (and it installs once). The full  install size is 53 MB - a tenth (at least) of what it was previous. If you ask an IT department to deploy your application and they have to install 3 seperate frameworks, and then your app, they will tell you to hop it. Think of deploying this on 500 machines as an IT head.

That is what the problem is.

vesuvius said:

The client profile only has the client .dlls and omits ASP.NET, WCF, WWF for example so is a sweet 28MB download (and it installs once). The full  install size is 53 MB - a tenth (at least) of what it was previous. If you ask an IT department to deploy your application and they have to install 3 seperate frameworks, and then your app, they will tell you to hop it. Think of deploying this on 500 machines as an IT head.

Um, that's my day job. It's really not an issue. In fact it's pretty trivial. I think this is one of those areas that developers get all bothered about for no reason.

Where it is in issue is:

If it's a signifcant change in infrastructure, there is considerable testing time needed. So organisations with .NET < 3.5 apps are going to be somewhat hesitant about installing updated frameworks and the potential for breakages.

Joe Bloggs downloading over the internet. In which case they can now use the client profile, reducing the overall download time. 

AndyC said:

vesuvius said:

*snip*

Um, that's my day job. It's really not an issue. In fact it's pretty trivial. I think this is one of those areas that developers get all bothered about for no reason.

Where it is in issue is:

If it's a signifcant change in infrastructure, there is considerable testing time needed. So organisations with .NET < 3.5 apps are going to be somewhat hesitant about installing updated frameworks and the potential for breakages.

Joe Bloggs downloading over the internet. In which case they can now use the client profile, reducing the overall download time. 

Andy, I'm not trying to blow smoke up your *, but I imagine you are one of the better IT heads out there, and you will use AD to deploy and other such technologies.

There are a lot of "IT Heads" who think that a ram upgrade is a complicated job, and they are the ones that would baulk at the idea of these installs.

jh71283 said:

AndyC said:

*snip*

Andy, I'm not trying to blow smoke up your *, but I imagine you are one of the better IT heads out there, and you will use AD to deploy and other such technologies.

There are a lot of "IT Heads" who think that a ram upgrade is a complicated job, and they are the ones that would baulk at the idea of these installs.

The prequesites not help with your deployment if you are experiencing long wait times? AFAIK you can include the framework as an option to install from the same location as your app at install time no?

Pace said:

jh71283 said:

*snip*

The prequesites not help with your deployment if you are experiencing long wait times? AFAIK you can include the framework as an option to install from the same location as your app at install time no?

Yes, but it is not the download time that is the issue, it's the install time.

Pace said:

jh71283 said:

*snip*

The prequesites not help with your deployment if you are experiencing long wait times? AFAIK you can include the framework as an option to install from the same location as your app at install time no?

That is what the problem is, you cannot include it on an install CD. Leats say I have an application that is 20 MB big and It is possible to have the client framework on a CD at 28 MB. The total size is 48 MB. The install time will be less than 5 minutes, the application is up and running and all is hunky-dory!

As it is, if you choose not to install over the internet, you have to give users all the frameworks the total size is around 600MB and the install time will be 1 to 2 hours at least. Which would you rather have?

There is no two ways about it. An offine install of the client profile should have been made available.

vesuvius said:

Pace said:

*snip*

That is what the problem is, you cannot include it on an install CD. Leats say I have an application that is 20 MB big and It is possible to have the client framework on a CD at 28 MB. The total size is 48 MB. The install time will be less than 5 minutes, the application is up and running and all is hunky-dory!

As it is, if you choose not to install over the internet, you have to give users all the frameworks the total size is around 600MB and the install time will be 1 to 2 hours at least. Which would you rather have?

There is no two ways about it. An offine install of the client profile should have been made available.

Vesuvius said:

There is no two ways about it. An offine install of the client profile should have been made available.

And, IMO, the client profile should be flexible, so that you can have installs such as


.Net 3.5 SP1 Client
=================
.Net 3.0 SP2 Client
=================
.Net 2.0 SP2 Full Install



As it stands, at has to be all Client or all Full Install.

jh71283 said:

Pace said:

*snip*

Yes, but it is not the download time that is the issue, it's the install time.

Ah I see! Sorry guys, my bad

vesuvius said:

Pace said:

*snip*

That is what the problem is, you cannot include it on an install CD. Leats say I have an application that is 20 MB big and It is possible to have the client framework on a CD at 28 MB. The total size is 48 MB. The install time will be less than 5 minutes, the application is up and running and all is hunky-dory!

As it is, if you choose not to install over the internet, you have to give users all the frameworks the total size is around 600MB and the install time will be 1 to 2 hours at least. Which would you rather have?

There is no two ways about it. An offine install of the client profile should have been made available.

What. Like this one?

Although I'd be mighty impressed if you can find a machine that takes 2 hours to install even the full runtime and is capable of running WPF apps.

AndyC said:

vesuvius said:

*snip*

What. Like this one?

Although I'd be mighty impressed if you can find a machine that takes 2 hours to install even the full runtime and is capable of running WPF apps.

I've already tried to incorporate that as a set up deployment for a test application today. I was wanting to write a blog post on the client profile which was when I found the limitation

Issues are;

1. It does not install on Vista. It should and you then have the option include it in your project
2. It is ten times as large as the web install
3. I recommend you read this link (included in the first post) and you will see that you are now having to drill down to the registry etc, which is more hassle than its worth. Something like this should just work.

It is not just WPF applications. I will be releasing a Winforms application soon for people to test on their laptops and a 48MB install without needing to go to the internet was what I envisaged.

AndyC said:

vesuvius said:

*snip*

What. Like this one?

Although I'd be mighty impressed if you can find a machine that takes 2 hours to install even the full runtime and is capable of running WPF apps.

WPF apps run perfectly on 600Mhz macines, running WEPOS.

.Net framework 3.5 takes a long time to install on these.

vesuvius said:

AndyC said:

*snip*

I've already tried to incorporate that as a set up deployment for a test application today. I was wanting to write a blog post on the client profile which was when I found the limitation

Issues are;

1. It does not install on Vista. It should and you then have the option include it in your project
2. It is ten times as large as the web install
3. I recommend you read this link (included in the first post) and you will see that you are now having to drill down to the registry etc, which is more hassle than its worth. Something like this should just work.

It is not just WPF applications. I will be releasing a Winforms application soon for people to test on their laptops and a 48MB install without needing to go to the internet was what I envisaged.

I still don't see where you're getting this 500MB install from, even the full version of .NET 3.5 is only 197MB and, given that 2.0 and 3.0 are both installed on Vista, it's pretty swift to install there. Obviously it's going to take longer on XP with no framework but if your only doing WinForms apps you do have the option of targetting an earlier version, to reduce the amount that needs installing.

Obviously it's going to be bigger than the web install, because the web install is downloading only selected parts of it. That's kind of the point of the web based installer. But I thought you said it wasn't size that mattered, only installation time. Extracting the 50-odd meg that actually gets installed from a local cache is surely faster than downloading it and installing it?

I read the link and am not sure what you mean about drilling down into the registry. There are a couple of keys that can be used to detect if it's already installed. Should be trivial to knock up some installation conditions based on them in Windows Installer (and presumably any other installer engine for that matter).

AndyC said:

vesuvius said:

*snip*

I still don't see where you're getting this 500MB install from, even the full version of .NET 3.5 is only 197MB and, given that 2.0 and 3.0 are both installed on Vista, it's pretty swift to install there. Obviously it's going to take longer on XP with no framework but if your only doing WinForms apps you do have the option of targetting an earlier version, to reduce the amount that needs installing.

Obviously it's going to be bigger than the web install, because the web install is downloading only selected parts of it. That's kind of the point of the web based installer. But I thought you said it wasn't size that mattered, only installation time. Extracting the 50-odd meg that actually gets installed from a local cache is surely faster than downloading it and installing it?

I read the link and am not sure what you mean about drilling down into the registry. There are a couple of keys that can be used to detect if it's already installed. Should be trivial to knock up some installation conditions based on them in Windows Installer (and presumably any other installer engine for that matter).

I cannot believe that it is this difficult to get through to an IT professional the problem. Why do you think they created the client profile anyway?  Nevertheless I will try.

The company I am writing software for at the moment have upgraded their old machines to dual cores, but on most have retained or  re-installed XP. That is the year 2008.

I have a test application I intend to distribute on CD. At present the requirements are

The .NET 2.0 redistributable, install will be 120 - 150 MB (may be more with framework specific service packs)
The .NET 3.0 redistributable, install will be 120 - 150 MB (may be more with framework specific service packs)
The .NET 3.5 redistributable was 50 MB last time I checked (will be more with the new .NET 3.5 SP1 as that is a huge service pack)
Windows Installer 4.5 Redistributable 50 MB (will have SQL 2008 express - the test application)

Size does matter because with SQL express and my application you looking at 400MB, plus my application files and SQL server. Plus when you take into account that the install time for each framework is ages, your obtuseness and failure to grasp this simple dilemma leaves me rather perplexed?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Were the client framework available as an off-line install I would have;

Client profile - 28 MB resulting in a 5 min install
My application files etc, giving the users only what they need.

Maybe its because I am fastidious about the way I write code. I try to never have anything superfluous. If you don't need System.XML.Linq then remove the reference to it. This is one of the easiest and quickest ways to improve application performance.

If you then take into account .NET cold start up times, and the .dlls needed to be loaded into memory, its a best practice to only have the libraries you need. If you cannot see the problem with installing all these frameworks, just for the sake of it, I have run out of steam in this thread.