I want to support as many versions of ACT! as possible, we are only accessing the users, company, and groups classes for phone numbers and contact info.
What is the best way to go about supporting as many versions as possible since very few of our users use the latest version. Do we simply buy the older versions and compile against them? How far back does the framework go?
We have handled this issue by compiling against ACT 7 API, but ACT 9 moved from .net 1.1 to 2.0. Our app was .net 1.1, so there were issues when ACT moved to 2.0. We are now 2.0, so all is OK again.
There are minor (undocumented) differences between the API in different versions, but for most purposes they do not impact. However, if you want to support custom entities, you will need to compile against ACT 10.
We think we are going to wind up with two builds - one for ACT 7/8/9, one for 10+.
Yeah its a bit of a pain with the regular 12-18 product life cycle. I used to have a VM on my machine with version 7.04, 8.02, 9.0, 10.0 and my working "real" machine 10.01.
It sounds like you only really need the Act.Framework.dll and possibly the Act.Shared.Collecions.dll also for plugin error logging Act.SHared.Diagnostics.dll
You might be able to just add them to the GAC manually on VMs without the full product installed but I have no idea if that would be possible or whether they would fail registration.
Maybe someone else with a bitmore knowledge might be able to chip in some advice on that?
This is how I do it, you take the media disk for whatever version, copy the GAC folder from it's structure and name it "Act 7.0 GAC" and put it somewhere, doesn't really matter where, somewhere central, and do that for whichever versions you build against, then just add those dll's to your project, thus allowing you to compile against whatever version, regardless of which particular version you actually have installed.
Second part, .net 1.1 and .net 2.0, for actual programs that function outside of Act!, I've had issues with things compiled against 1.1 versions of act not being able to log in to 2.0 versions of Act! databases. Note: This is probably something I'm just doing wrong, but to make it simple, I just compile two versions, since most of my work is custom plugins. That being said, if you are writing an actual Act! plugin that loads with Act, you shouldn't have any issues running something compiled against Act 7.0.0 on Act 10.0.2. There are a couple changes that make this not entirely true, but they all involve the Opportunity classes, avoid those and you should be _ok_
