[The Architect 2.0]

I recently read an old MSDN post that said winform and wpf apps should be targetting client profiles rather than the full profile. So, does anyone care? anyone has issues with deployment because of this?

personally, I never seem to have needed in install .NET versions ever on anyone's computer.

I'm also interested if there are any differences between corporate and consumer apps.

[negligible]

There's not much point with .NET 4 most of the time, although there are some differences, client doesn't have ASP.NET for example. (As why would you need a server side language on a client)

[Skydiver]

Ah, you are are lucky to have come into the scene late enough that you don't have to install .NET on the client machines. It used to be a struggle to get people to download the 20MB+ download and "entertain" them with some kind of progress bar while the .NET Framework took 5+ minutes to install.

Anyway to answer your question, yes, whenever possible target the client profile rather than the full profile. More likely than not, current users will have the client profile already installed. And if not, you'll only be forcing them to install a smaller package that takes less time to download and install.

Most companies that have in-house corporate apps will typically also have a corporate IT department (even if it's a department of 1/2 a person). Usually the IT department will take care of pushing out any pre-requisite dependencies so that when the in-house application is pushed out, it just works by magic. If you don't have the benefit of (or don't take time to work with) an IT department, then you need to make your app setup robust enough to install its dependencies... e.g. just like a consumer app.

[Curtis Rutland]

Client Profile if possible. The .NET Framework has gotten huge, with lots of features never rarely needed on a client machine. It's usually possible to target the client profile and be fine.

[cgseif323]

I believe you'd usually want the Client Profile, unless you are trying to go cross-platform. Linux has Mono and MonoDevelop (Visual Studio-like IDE), and I don't think Mono supports developing using the Client Profile.

Also, use the Client Profile if you are developing anything other than server apps. Server apps like in Asp.NET do need the full framework.

[marty617]

The client profile is going away, so there is only one distribution in the future anyway starting with 4.5.

http://msdn.microsof...y/cc656912.aspx