.NET Framework 4 Client Profile
To improve deployment size, time and overall experience of
the .NET Framework 4 deployment, there is now a more compact version of .NET
that is a subset of the full .NET Framework 4 - called the .NET Framework 4 Client Profile. The current
redistributable size of the .NET Framework 4 Client Profile is about 30MB. The
full Microsoft .NET Framework 4 is a pure superset of the Client Profile.
The goal of the .NET Framework 4 Client Profile is to
improve and help streamline the deployment size, time, reliability and overall
deployment experience for client applications. The Client Profile contains the
functionality that most common desktop client applications (including Windows
Forms and WPF applications) would need so it is anticipated that the majority
of client application developers will target it instead of the Full .NET
Framework 4. For that reason, most Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 client project templates
target the .NET Framework 4 Beta 2 Client Profile by default.
Unlike the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Client Profile, an
important enhancement in the NET Framework 4 Client Profile is its support on
all platforms and OSs, including those supported by the Full Framework like
Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Servers 2003 and 2008, Windows 7, all for
both x86 and x64.
You can view or change the version of the framework that you
target by opening your project’s properties window, and then select the
"Application" page. You can then change the “Target framework”
drop-down to either the full .NET Framework or the .NET Client Profile.
The project Publish property page also allows you to select the prerequisite
needed for your ClickOnce deployment. In Beta2, VS2010 automatically selects
the correct profile (Client Profile or Full) depending on your primary project
target:
Figure 13
The same prerequisite dialog from above appears when you
create “Setup and Deployment” projects (under “Add New Project”/“Other Project
Types”). The NET4 Client Profile prerequisite entry is checked by default in
this case.