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Developer PSA: Support Ending for the .NET Framework 4, 4.5 and 4.5.1

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wraith808:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2015/12/09/support-ending-for-the-net-framework-4-4-5-and-4-5-1.aspx

I don't know how I missed this!

As previously announced, starting January 12, 2016 Microsoft will no longer provide security updates, technical support or hotfixes for .NET 4, 4.5, and 4.5.1 frameworks. All other framework versions, including 3.5, 4.5.2, 4.6 and 4.6.1, will be supported for the duration of their established lifecycle. The decision to end support for these versions will allow us to invest more resources towards improvements of the .NET Framework.
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More at link.  I thought the versions that were affected... and unaffected... were interesting, and confusing!

Renegade:
Thanks for the heads up.

Stoic Joker:
Why would they need to support 4.0 directly? 4.5.1 gets upgraded to 4.5.2, and 4.5.2 includes 4.0 just like 3.5 includes 3.0 and 2.0. So they're not really orphaning it, their just bundling it in with the latest version to limit the number of updates that need to be futzed with.

wraith808:
Why would they need to support 4.0 directly? 4.5.1 gets upgraded to 4.5.2, and 4.5.2 includes 4.0 just like 3.5 includes 3.0 and 2.0. So they're not really orphaning it, their just bundling it in with the latest version to limit the number of updates that need to be futzed with.

[ Invalid Attachment ]
-Stoic Joker (December 12, 2015, 07:53 AM)
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Because of software and development.  If you target 4.0 in your applications, then you are using an unsupported version.  Much of our infrastructure in the company I work for is using 4.0.  Most of the software I have linked from the site also uses 4.0.  Unless I recompile it for 4.5 and re-release, it's unsupported.  Even if the assemblies for the versions are in the same place, they are not the same version, as you can see by the linked assemblies a build is targeting.

Stoic Joker:
Um... Okay, but just because they're dropping support for a specific install version of a framework doesn't (appear to) mean it's no longer usable. It just means - or at least appears to mean - that you need to be running a supported version that includes it.

You may have one or more applications that are currently targeting a .NET Framework version that will no longer be supported. You can run those applications on a later .NET Framework version without targeting a new version-the article you linked to
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I would read that as meaning if you call MS for support on an issue with - an as installed version of - .NET4.0 they'll tell you that you will have to update it to v4.5.2 - which includes 4.0 - before they will help with anything. So if you're compiled to run 4.0, and have 4.5.2 installed (which includes 4.0) there shouldn't be any issues.



(Only tangentially related)
Now granted I just started playing with C#/.NET stuff in the last few years...so it's really not my thing. But it appears that you can target a project to multiple .NET versions:
By default, an app runs on the version of the .NET Framework that it was built for. If that version is not present and the app configuration file does not define supported versions, a .NET Framework initialization error may occur. In this case, the attempt to run the app will fail.

To define the specific versions on which your app runs, add one or more <supportedRuntime> elements to your app's configuration file. Each <supportedRuntime> element lists a supported version of the runtime, with the first specifying the most preferred version and the last specifying the least preferred version.
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^From here: Version Compatibility in the .NET Framework

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