Run C# program without .Net - isn't repost

Question

So i know that C# require .Net be installed, because of BCL, CLR, etc...

But i have a WPF application, supposed to work in win98-XP, and can't install .Net higher, than version 2, so WPF requires 3.5 afaik.

So idea is in static linking. Can I staticaly link all used libraries (mscorlib, clr, etc) and launch it like a simple native application? I don't care if application size is many mbytes, it just should work.

WPF likely highly depends on things in the NT side of things. I doubt it will run. — Daniel A. White, Dec 02 '13 at 10:53
May be helpful: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/953146/running-net-based-application-without-net-framework — Ondrej Janacek, Dec 02 '13 at 10:53
What you will find is that WPF relies on Windows API functionality that does not exist on Windows 98. You are going to need to recalibrate your expectations. — David Heffernan, Dec 02 '13 at 10:57
Personally, I wouldn't want to support a version of the operating system that Microsoft itself doesn't support... — John Saunders, Dec 02 '13 at 10:58
@AlexJoukovsky The fact that you state that the question is not a duplicate does not mean that it is not a duplicate. — David Heffernan, Dec 02 '13 at 11:02

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 02 '13 at 11:02

In fact the initial version of WPF ran on .net 3.0 so in principle that's the minimum version that you need. Of course, .net 3.0 requires XP or later and does not support Windows 98.

The essential problem that you have is not that the framework installer won't run on Windows 98. The problem is that .net 3.0 and the WPF framework use functionality that does not exist on Windows 98. Even if you get all the .net framework DLLs onto Windows 98, they won't run because the depend on functionality that does not exist on Windows 98.

Tnx for exhaustively complete answer. – Alex Zhukovskiy Dec 02 '13 at 11:05 — Alex Zhukovskiy, Dec 02 '13 at 11:05

Run C# program without .Net - isn't repost

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