Trouble with Rhino 8 and .NET 8 runtime installed using script

Rhino Developer
,
1

I am running into trouble getting Rhino 8 SR 19 with .NET 8 to work on Windows Server 2025. The issue seems to be related to how Rhino 8 detects whether the .NET Desktop Runtime is installed. If I install it manually using the downloaded installer, it works. However, if I install it using dotnet-install.ps1, Rhino does not detect it.

List of installed .NET runtimes
List of installed .NET runtimes1798×566 217 KB

Error message when trying to switch to v8 using SetDotNetRuntime
Error message when trying to switch to v8 using SetDotNetRuntime876×320 55.5 KB

C:\Program Files\dotnet is part of the PATH as well. Maybe I’m missing to set some other environment variable?

3

Hi @snabela,

dotnet-install.ps1 is intended to be used for CI scenarios, and specifically notes “To set up a development environment or to run apps, use the installers rather than these scripts.”.

We use standard hostfxr APIs to find the appropriate runtime. I doubt that even a standard .NET Core WinForms or WPF app would work using the same installation method.

As an example of an automated install, you can do something like the following:

powershell -NoProfile -Command ^
    $url = 'https://builds.dotnet.microsoft.com/dotnet/WindowsDesktop/8.0.16/windowsdesktop-runtime-8.0.16-win-x64.exe'; ^
    $output = 'dotnet-windowsdesktop-installer.exe'; ^
    $ProgressPreference = 'SilentlyContinue'; ^
    Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $url -OutFile $output; ^
    Start-Process -FilePath $output -ArgumentList '/quiet', '/norestart' -Wait; ^
    Remove-Item $output

Hope this helps!

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