Will application targeting minor .net version work correctly on computers with major .net version only

Question

Will WPF application targeting .NET 4.6.1 work correctly on computers with .NET 4.6 installed if app is not using any 4.6.1 specific features?

EDIT According to Rick Strahl's blog here you can specify the lower .net version to be used and as long as you're not using any higher version specific features in your code it will work fine. I'll test and post that as accepted answer if it works as expected.

<configuration>
    <startup> 
        <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.6"/>
    </startup>
</configuration>

As for the question why target a version if not using any version specific features, there are many scenarios where this could happen. In my case I started project as a newly hired contractor and had no idea and was not informed what version of .NET will be available on client machines and what version I need to target and no clarity of what the future of the project holds. The dev machine assigned to me had 4.6.1 multi-targeting pack and that's what Visual Studio defaulted to when I created the solution... so while your question may appear to be very clever I don't think it really is...

The real question is why target 4.6.1 when you only limit yourself to features on 4.6? — Alejandro, Apr 11 '18 at 15:49
It will not start. That's called "correct" as well. There are not many machines left that were not updated to at least 4.6.2 — Hans Passant, Apr 11 '18 at 16:25

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 11 '18 at 15:46

1

You need to have at least that version of .net framework installed for the app to work. A .net 4.6.1 app will run if you have .net 4.6.1 or 4.7 or 4.7.1 but not 4.6

answered Apr 11 '18 at 15:46

Ken Tucker

4,126
1
18
24

Will application targeting minor .net version work correctly on computers with major .net version only

1 Answers1