>I wanted to address this issue specifically. I think the CLR is down to 12-15 megs. I am not sure of the exact number. I do know it is way down from the 100+ mb size that existed in Beta 1. From what I understand, the next versions of windows will automatically have the CLR. This is a BIG issue from a software distribution standpoint. All you are left to distribute is you EXE and/or your DLL's. Guess what - it will be simply a matter of employing the xcopy command. There are no registry entries to deal with. This is one of the big differences between ActiveX Controls and .Net Controls. .Net controls are built on top of the CLR. How these items get included in an assembly, I don't know yet. (I will find out soon!!). At worst, it is a matter of employing xcopy! Software distribution is going to get a lot easier.
>

This is from the latest .NET Developer Extra. See the newsletter for the entire article:

According to what I've seen, and responses I received
from Microsoft, the packaging projects included with
Visual Studio .NET will also package a copy of the .NET
Framework version used to create the application. The
Installation program will check the client machine for
the version of the .NET Framework used to create your
application. If the version doesn't appear, it will
automatically install a copy of the .NET Framework for
the client. Each version of the .NET Framework will
appear under the \WINNT\Microsoft.NET\Framework\ folder
on the user's machine. Because each version appears in
it's own directory, there's little chance of version-
related problems.

Of course, this technique has two negative ramifications.
First, it increases the size of your application
installation package. Even a "Hello World" application
will require CD distribution because the installation
package includes a copy of the .NET Framework. Second, I
can foresee users having a dozen or so versions of the
.NET Framework installed on their machine eventually.
Talk about massive code bloat! The most current version
of the .NET Framework on my machine is 1.0.3215, so I
have the following folder:
\WINNT\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.0.3215, which contains
the 45+ MB of code required for .NET distribution.