One of the biggest asks we've had over the years from customers
and ISVs building client applications is to make the setup and installation of
the .NET Framework easier and faster.
This summer we are going to ship a new setup framework for
.NET that makes it easier to build optimized setup packages for client
applications. This setup framework can be integrated with existing installation
frameworks (for example: products like InstallShield), and enables a smaller
and faster end-user setup experience of the .NET Framework.
Windows Forms and WPF client applications will be able to
use this setup framework to cleanly “bootstrap” getting the .NET Framework
installed onto machines. The setup “bootstrap” utility will support automatically downloading the minimal set of .NET Framework packages needed to enable
.NET 3.5 client applications on a machine. For example, if a user already has
.NET 2.0 installed on their machine, setup will be smart enough to
automatically download only the upgrade patches necessary to update .NET 2.0 to
3.5 (and not have to re-download the components already provided by .NET 2.0).
This will significantly shrink the payload size of client setup programs, and
speed up the installation experience.
We’ll also be delivering improvements that enable a more
integrated application install experience for both MSI and ClickOnce based
solutions, and support a more consumer friendly user experience that is easy to
build.