.NET Framework Multi Targeting in Visual Studio 2008
One of the great features in Visual Studio 2008 is the ".NET Framework Multi Targeting". This allows you to build applications targeting any of these frameworks using Visual Studio 2008:
- .NET Framework 2.0 - released with Visual Studio 2005
- .NET Framework 3.0 - released with Windows Vista
- .NET Framework 3.5 - will release with Visual Studio Orcas
After I built a project targeted .NET framework 2.0 I encountered problem on a machine with .NET framework 2.0 installed.
It turns out that when installing Visual Studio 2008, it also install .NET framework 2.0 SP1. Hence, this means that when you target .NET 2.0 in Visual Studio 2008, you are really targeting .NET 2.0 SP1.
To run applications which built with Visual Studio 2008 and targeted to .NET framework 2.0, be aware that you need NET framework 2.0 SP1 on the application's host.