Thread: Why use C#?

Yeah that's the only drawback. Keeping in mind though, a linker is not always a good thing - sometimes dynamic linking is the best option. The only reasons I'd use a linker is for demo versions and very basic and small apps, so the user doesn't need to download a 22mb runtime for a 2mb program. But for larger programs, having the runtime dynamicaly linked seems the best option, mainly due to security reasons.

Originally Posted by nvoigt

Programmatically ? Yes, but you have to do it yourself. Back in beta MS provided a merge module that could be included in the installer and would install the Framework automatically, but this didn't make it into release for unknown reasons. So if you write an installer package, check for the framework and install it if it's not on the target machine, it should work.

You might want to check this out: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/do.../bootstrapper/

Here is Microsoft's description: "The Visual Studio .NET Framework Bootstrapper Plug-in modifies the behavior of the Setup project's Bootstrapper property to include the .NET Framework bootstrapper. The .NET Framework redistributable is then packaged with your application; when the user runs the bootstrapper setup.exe, it checks for the correct version of the .NET Framework at install time and if necessary, installs it before installing your application."