Loading .NET 7 and .NET 8 assemblies in the Standalone Report Designer for .NET
Environment
| Product | Progress® Telerik® Reporting |
| Version | up to R3 2023 SP1 |
| Report Designer | .NET Standalone Designer |
Description
This article describes How to load .NET 7/8 assemblies in the Standalone Report Designer for .NET (SRD.NET for short).
It is important to state that SRD.NET is targeting .NET 6 instead of .NET 7 or .NET 8 due to the following reasons:
- .NET 6 is the version of the target framework that has Long Term Support (LTS), while .NET 7 is defined only as STS (Standard-Term Support).
- Users that do not have the .NET 7/8 runtime installed yet, might not be able to run the SRD.NET.
- .NET 7 introduce certain breaking changes, especially in the serialization domain.
Despite that, the application is configured in a way that makes it possible to load .NET 7 and .NET 8 assemblies. SRD.NET is built with a dedicated property that allows it to be run against future version of .NET runtime: <RollForward>Major</RollForward>
This property ensures that when .NET 6 runtime is not installed, but .NET 7 or .NET 8 is available, the SRD.NET will run against .NET 7/8.
However, if you have both .NET 6 and .NET 7/8 installed on your machine, and you try to load a .NET 7/8 assembly in the SRD.NET, you will encounter the following exception (for .NET 7):
System.IO.FileLoadException: Could not load file or assembly 'System.Runtime, Version=7.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a'.
Could not find or load a specific file. (0x80131621)
This happens because the RollForward property is set to Major, and the framework version is rolled forward only when the requested version is not present. Thus, if you have .NET 6 installed, the application will be executed using .NET 6 runtime and it will not be able to load the custom .NET 7/8 assembly, throwing an exception as a result.
For further information about controlling the RollForward behavior at runtime, check the related Microsoft documentation article section Control roll-forward behavior.
Solution
Start SRD.NET while setting the RollForward option to LatestMajor from the command prompt:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Progress\Telerik Reporting {Version}\Report Designer\.NET>Telerik.ReportDesigner.Net.exe --roll-forward LatestMajor"
As explained in the "Values" section of the aforementioned Microsoft documentation article, the LatestMajor option will enforce the use of the latest .NET runtime, even if the targeted .NET 6 runtime is available.
If you intend to use SRD.NET with .NET 7/8 runtime, create a shortcut with the parameter --roll-forward LatestMajor and use it to start the application.