How to ship a Windows Forms application to a client without .NET?

This is about the deployment of a Windows Forms application. I have created a Windows Forms application, but I'm not sure if the users have installed .NET version 4. I have put my Windows Forms application at my website and the users will down开发者_高级运维load it to their desktop.

How do I automate the process of downloading and installing .NET 4 if the users have not installed it? What are the recommended ways of deploying Windows Forms applications to users?

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You could try ClickOnce.

ClickOnce deployment allows you to publish Windows-based applications to a Web server or network file share for simplified installation.

You just need to define which prerequisites you want to include in bootstraper, as described here

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You could define prerequisites in your Setup And Deployment Project.

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You need to provide an installer and mark .NET as a prerequisite. See Stack Overflow question How to make an installer for my C# application? (.NET 3.5, but the idea is the same).

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You could always download and include the .NET 4 redistributable. It about 40 MB so it may not be the most optimal solution, but it may be the easiest for the client.