LightSwitch and Silverlight 5

Question

Now that Silverlight 5 has been released, what's the policy with LightSwitch?

Is Silverlight 5 compatible with LightSwitch at design-time and/or run-time or do we, the developers, and the users, have to hold off installing Silverlight 5 until LightSwitch is updated? If so, how would new users get Silverlight 4 now that 5 is out?

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/silverlight/archive/2011/12/09/silverlight-5-available-for-download-today.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/

A statement here and/or in the LightSwitch Developer Centre would be good.

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Simon Jones
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Answer 1

Simon, I did install SL5 and have no issues with LS.   But just wonder same as you like "What would happen when a user opens my application who doesn't have SL4 installed already"?

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-Bala

Answer 2

I take it you "had no problems" using LightSwitch in the development environment with Silverlight 5. If so, that is encouraging as that is where other people have reported problems in the past. Other people have reported that Silverlight 5 RC worked OK at run-time despite it not being officially supported.

I'd like an official statement from the LightSwitch Team at Microsoft that Silverlight 5 is now supported and guidance as to whether there are any steps required to use it other than installing it (For example, if any other updates are required).

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Simon Jones
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Answer 3

Simon, I did install SL5 and have no issues with LS.   But just wonder same as you like "What would happen when a user opens my application who doesn't have SL4 installed already"?

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-Bala

That's because LS is compiled with SL4 and even if you install SL5 development on your machine, LS will run as if it was SL4 installed. Once LS is compiled with SL5, then it will use SL5 runtime.

And for your new users, LS is still pointing at SL4 runtime link, so they will get SL4 runtime just like before.

[Probably] you would not see LS for SL5 until the next version of LS, unless there are problems in SL4 that LS team may feel it's best to move to SL5.

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..Ben

Answer 4

Hi Simon,

If you install Silverlight 5 runtime on your development machine, the next time you open a LightSwitch project you will be prompted to install the SL5 developer runtime. Other than that, no changes, and everything just works - LightSwitch isn't aware of any of the new features in SL5

If a user of a deployed LightSwitch app installs the SL5 runtime it has no effect; the app continues to run as before.

I'm not sure on this one because i haven't tried it - I assume that if you recompile your app after installing the SL5 developer runtime, the end user would be prompted to install SL5 on next run.

Hope this helps,

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Steve Hoag Microsoft aka the Lights Witch (IEnumerable of Newt)

Answer 5

Thanks for the reply.

I wasn't looking for LightSwitch to instantly use any of the new features in Silverlight 5, I just wanted to make sure that neither the development environment nor the runtime environment would break if someone installed Silverlight 5.

The silence from Microsoft on these matters was "concerning". Thank you for allaying any fears.

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Simon Jones
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Answer 6

I installed SL5 and have no major problems, except that the for a project using the metro theme, the ribbon buttons are only visible when you hover over them. When I open the same project on a SL4 machine, the buttons are just fine.

-paul.

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paul van bladel

Answer 7

Ok, I've installed SL5, and was prompted to install the SDK. But once I installed the SDK LS stopped working. It's giving me an error and telling me to download the SL4 Dev Runtime... It might be that the SL5 Dev Runtime is now not included in SL5 Tools for VS 2010 anymore, which is what I'm going to install next, however the link in LS is still SL4 Dev Runtime (patch that please). TIA

Edit: Yep. SL5 Dev Runtime has to be installed separately on an x64 machine (but I'm preety sure it and SDK was part of VS Tools before).

Answer 8

Hi Paul,

If you are experiencing issues with the metro theme it would be best to report it on the Code Gallery page for the extension. Also, it would help to have more details - is this design time only, or in a deployed app, or both?

I will try to repro this tomorrow on my machine that has the metro extension installed.

Thanks,

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Steve Hoag Microsoft aka the Lights Witch (IEnumerable of Newt)

Answer 9

DD81 -

Can we assume that you now have LightSwitch working again?

Regards,

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Steve Hoag Microsoft aka the Lights Witch (IEnumerable of Newt)

Answer 10

Well, LS itself yes, my LS project however no...it's using a DX LS reporting tool and that's refusing to start with SL5 on the account of:

Could not load file or assembly 'DevExpress.Xpf.Printing.v11.1.Core, Version=11.1.8.5, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

So no SL5 if you're using LS with SL controls built on SL4? TIA

Answer 11

AFAIK there is nothing in Silverlight 5 that would break backward compatibility. My guess is that your reference to the DLL is pointing to the wrong folder. Have you tried removing and re-adding the reference?

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Steve Hoag Microsoft aka the Lights Witch (IEnumerable of Newt)

Answer 12

After installing Silverlight 64bit Developer Runtime i am keep getting this error when i try to load a Lightswitch application:

'Unable to find a version of Silverlight Developer Runtime installed. Please install the Silverlight Developer Runtime' The error is pointing me to a download link and when i press on that it says to me that i have already installed Silverlight 5 64bit Developer runtime. So what should i do for this?

Thank you.

Answer 13

I forgot to mention that i installed only SL 5 on this machine. So after i installed and SL 4 everyhting was ok.

 

Answer 14

Hi Paul,

If you are experiencing issues with the metro theme it would be best to report it on the Code Gallery page for the extension. Also, it would help to have more details - is this design time only, or in a deployed app, or both?

I will try to repro this tomorrow on my machine that has the metro extension installed.

Thanks,

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Steve Hoag Microsoft aka the Lights Witch (IEnumerable of Newt)

Hi Steve,

I did as you suggested and posted the issue in the q & a session of the extension.

I only tested this in development time. I'm currently not using any extension in production scenario's, so unfortunately I can't reproduce in  a deployed app.

Kind regards

paul.

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paul van bladel

Answer 15

I received the same error.  The problem is because of installing the x64 version.  I uninstalled it and reinstalled using the link that pops up in Visual Studion 2010, and all was well.

 

I also installed the Silverlight 5 SDK and Silverlight 5 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 SP1:

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=229318

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Clayton

Answer 16

Hi I too am getting this error when trying to create a new LS project. 

'Unable to find a version of Silverlight Developer Runtime installed. Please install the Silverlight Developer Runtime' The error is pointing me to a download link and when i press on that it says to me that i have already installed Silverlight 5 64bit Developer runtime"

I've uninstalled all SL SDKs (3,4,5) and the VS tool for SL and SL itself and reinstalled VS tools for SL5 and SL5 SDK.  still getting error.  running VS 2010 ultimate SP1. 

Any ideas how to get LS to work?