SocketTools 11 includes assemblies which target .NET 4.0 through .NET 8.0. They are available as part of the standard installation package; however, you may need to reference them directly for new projects. This will always be required when building project using .NET 7.0 and later.
Important: .NET 5.0 reached end-of-support on May 8, 2022 and .NET Core 3.1 reached end-of-support on December 3, 2022. It is recommended you upgrade your projects to .NET 6.0 which is a long-term support (LTS) release. If you are using Visual Studio 2022, it will not include support for .NET 5.0 projects by default since that version is no longer supported by Microsoft.
The support lifecycle for .NET can be complicated because some of the .NET Framework versions are tied to support for the operating system. For more information, you can review the .NET Framework Lifecycle FAQ.
Visual Studio 2019 is required for projects using .NET 5.0. Visual Studio 2022 is required for projects using .NET 6.0 or .NET 7.0. If you wish to use the .NET 8.0 preview release, you must have the current version of the Visual Studio 2022 Preview installed.
To add .NET 5.0 or later versions of the SocketTools .NET assemblies to your project, you will need to add a reference to your project selecting Project › Add Project Reference from the menu and then clicking the Browse button. Then browse to the folder which contains the SocketTools assemblies you want to reference:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\SocketTools\11.0\Assemblies\v5.0
C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\SocketTools\11.0\Assemblies\v6.0
C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\SocketTools\11.0\Assemblies\v7.0
C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\SocketTools\11.0\Assemblies\v8.0
After you've selected the assembly, it will be included in the list of recently added references. In this example, the project is referencing the SocketTools.HttpClient class in version 10.
Returning to the Solution Explorer, you can select the assembly (under Dependencies) and then set the appropriate properties for your project. For example, if you want a local copy of the assembly.
.NET 6.0
.NET 6.0 is the current long-term support (LTS) version of the .NET Framework and was released on November 8, 2021. To use .NET 6.0 with your projects, you will need to use the current version of Visual Studio 2022 which includes the .NET 6.0 Runtime.
The installer for SocketTools 10 still defaults to selecting the .NET 4.5 assemblies, which are compatible with versions 4.5 through 4.8. In future updates for SocketTools, we will set .NET 6.0 as the default used with Visual Studio 2022.
Download
If you do not have the current version of the .NET SDKs installed on your development system, you can download them from Microsoft using the links below.
» Download .NET 5.0
» Download .NET 6.0
» Download .NET 7.0
» Download .NET 8.0
See Also
SocketTools .NET Redistribution
Reference Manager Lists Multiple Assemblies
Supported Versions of Visual Studio