I’ve been writing a lot of code recently in Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2008. Today was my first attempt to create a setup project to manage deployment of the application we’re writing. We’ve been pretty diligent in abstaining from targeting version 3.5 of the .NET Framework, since it’s not yet an officially released product. Imagine my surprise then, when I try to create a setup project that bootstraps the 3.0 version of the Framework, that I find it missing. I can target .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.5, but strangely, not .NET 3.0.
Fret not, however, for I have found the answer! If you’ve got Visual Studio 2005 installed, this should be easy. Just follow the steps listed here to make sure you have the redistributable packages setup there. After doing that, you’ll want to grab the entire NETFX30 folder from C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\BootStrapper\Packages\ and dump it into the folder at C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\V6.0A\Bootstrapper\Packages\. Now, when you visit the prerequisites section in your setup project’s properties, you should now be able to include the bootstrapper for .NET 3.0. Enjoy!
3 comments
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October 10, 2007 at 8:46 am
Dave Lowther
Thanks for posting. Solved the same issue for me.
November 30, 2007 at 9:40 am
Kevin Fairchild
How’d you get the 3.5 Framework to be available as a prerequisite? I had to use the 3.0 Framework Extensions to make 3.0 available, but I don’t see a similar tool for 3.5
–Kevin
November 30, 2007 at 10:31 am
xero
3.5 should appear so long as you’re using Studio 2008. If it doesn’t, then I’m afraid I’m not sure what could be the issue.