Tag: C#

Reading the version from a ClickOnce .application file

ClickOnce .application files contain an assemblyIdentity element with a version attribute:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
...
  <assemblyIdentity name="Simple Data Logger.application" version="1.1.2.1" publicKeyToken="0c3a74e9157b5601" language="en" processorArchitecture="msil" xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" />

An easy way to read this version string is:

var assembly = XElement.Load(uri);
XNamespace ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1";
remoteVersionString = assembly.Element(ns + "assemblyIdentity").Attribute("version").Value;

You can use this to create a Version object:

var version = new Version(remoteVersionString);

Note: The code above runs synchronously and blocks your application. To avoid this, you could run it in as a task on the thread pool with Task.Run() or you could use XElement.LoadAsync instead of XElement.Load(), if available.

Solution: The target version of the .NET Framework in the project does not match the .NET Framework launch condition version

The problem:

You’re building a setup project in Visual Studio (aka deployment project or installer project) and find the following warning in the build output:
The target version of the .NET framework in the project does not match the NET framework launch condition version...
The target version of the .NET framework in the project does not match the NET framework launch condition version…

Why this is happening:

The project you want to deploy (using the setup project) targets a more recent .NET Framework than specified in the setup project’s launch conditions. In my case, the project targets .NET Framework 4.7:
application target .NET framework
Double click on ‘Properties’ in the Solution Explorer to show this screen.
Meanwhile, the setup project was still checking for .NET Framework 4.6.1 as a launch condition (requirement on the target machine).

The solution: Update the launch condition version to match the target framework of your project.

In the Setup Project, double click on ‘Microsoft .NET Framework’ to show its properties. Then change the .NET Framework version in the dropdown list: launch condition .net framework version

Update April 2024: What about .NET Core and later .NET versions?

There’s nothing shown under “detected dependencies”, so changing the target framework as shown above is not possible. Note that this issue only appeared after  I upgraded a .NET framework solution to .NET 8 and tried reusing the installer project. Opening the .vdproj file and removing the reference to .NET framework fixed the issue:
.vdrpoj file of the installer project

One more thing: Check the prerequisites

While this has nothing to do with the warning, you might as well check which version of the .NET framework your setup program will install (if any). Right click on the setup project and select ‘Properties’. In the Property Pages dialog, click on ‘Prerequisites…’: setup program prerequisites