PreEmptive Protection Dotfuscator Professional 7.1


Windows Installer

Dotfuscator Professional can be installed using a traditional Windows installer package (.msi). We recommend using this package to install on Windows development machines. For macOS and Linux development machines, please use the NuGet package instead.

Certain kinds of build agents can also use the Windows installer - see Build Agents for details.

System Requirements

  • Operating System - one of the following:
    • Windows 7 or later
    • Windows Server 2008 R2 or later
  • .NET runtime: .NET Framework 4.7.2 or later
  • .NET SDK: .NET Framework SDK 1.1 or later
  • MSBuild - any of the following:
    • MSBuild for .NET Framework: 4.0 or later, running on .NET Framework 4.7.2 or later
    • MSBuild for .NET Core: 16.0 or later, with the .NET 6 (version 6.0.0 or higher) runtime installed
    • MSBuild for Mono: 16.0 or later, running on Mono 6.0 or later
    • MSBuild is not required to run the command line interface or Config Editor.
Note: These are the requirements for the machines where Dotfuscator runs. Dotfuscator can process apps that target other versions and flavors of .NET, such as Xamarin, MAUI, .NET 5, .NET Core, and both old and current versions of the full .NET Framework.

Below are examples of development tools (IDEs, SDKs, etc.) which Dotfuscator supports when using the Windows Installer.

Visual Studio (for Windows): 2012 and later.
Visual Studio Community, Professional, and Enterprise are supported.
You can integrate Dotfuscator into projects for .NET Framework, .NET 5, .NET Core, .NET Standard, Xamarin, and MAUI. Dotfuscator can run during builds started from the Visual Studio IDE as well as from the following command line tools that can be installed with Visual Studio: msbuild and dotnet. Installing Visual Studio (with a .NET workload in VS 2017 and later) will also satisfy the .NET runtime and .NET SDK requirements.

Visual Studio Code: any version.
You can integrate Dotfuscator into any .NET-based project. Dotfuscator can run during builds which are triggered through build tasks, if those build tasks call supported msbuild and dotnet tools. Visual Studio Code does not include these tools; you will need to install them via an SDK or another IDE.

.NET Framework runtime: 4.0 and later.
You can integrate Dotfuscator into projects for .NET Framework and .NET Standard. Dotfuscator can run during builds started from the .NET Framework msbuild command line tool.

.NET Core SDK: 2.1 and later (latest patch versions)
You can integrate Dotfuscator into projects for .NET Core and .NET Standard. Dotfuscator can run during builds started from the .NET Core dotnet command line tool.

Mono SDK: 6.0 and later
You can integrate Dotfuscator into projects for Mono and .NET Standard. Dotfuscator can run during builds started from the Mono msbuild command line tool.

Installation Instructions

Go to the Dotfuscator Downloads page to download the Dotfuscator Professional Installer. Then, run it on your development machine, noting the following:

  • You will need local administrator rights to run the installer.

  • If you have Dotfuscator 4 installed, the installer will give you the option to uninstall that older version. For migration instructions, see Upgrading from Dotfuscator 4.

  • When selecting features to install, ensure the MSBuild Components feature is enabled, as most projects will use Dotfuscator with these components.

  • After installation, if you have not yet activated Dotfuscator on the machine, the activation tool will launch. Follow the prompts to use your web browser to activate Dotfuscator.

After installation and activation, follow the Protect Your App instructions to integrate Dotfuscator into your build.

Installed Components

Dotfuscator's Windows Installer deploys the following components:

Component Installation Location
MSBuild targets $(MSBuildProgramFiles32)\MSBuild\PreEmptive\Dotfuscator\7\PreEmptive.Dotfuscator.Common.targets
MSBuild tasks (modern) $(MSBuildProgramFiles32)\MSBuild\PreEmptive\Dotfuscator\7\PreEmptive.Dotfuscator.Tasks.dll
MSBuild tasks (legacy) $(MSBuildProgramFiles32)\MSBuild\PreEmptive\Dotfuscator\7\legacy\PreEmptive.Dotfuscator.Tasks.dll
Command line interface {app dir}\dotfuscator.exe (.NET Framework app)
Config Editor Start Menu or {app dir}\dotfuscatorUI.exe
User Guide Start Menu or {app dir}\help\index.html
Obfuscation Attributes {app dir}\PreEmptive.ObfuscationAttributes.dll
PreMark tool {app dir}\premark.exe
TamperTester tool {app dir}\TamperTester.exe

where:

  • $(MSBuildProgramFiles32) is a reserved MSBuild property pointing to the C:\Program Files (x86) directory on 64-bit versions of Windows and C:\Program Files on 32-bit versions.

  • {app dir} is the directory where you chose to install Dotfuscator Professional.

    • The installer will set the DOTFUSCATOR_HOME environment variable to this directory's path.

    • If possible, the installer will also add this directory to your PATH environment variable, so in most cases you can invoke tools in this directory just by typing their names at the command line (e.g., dotfuscator for the command line interface).

DOTFUSCATOR_HOME variable

When it is installed using the Windows installer, Dotfuscator adds a system environment variable, DOTFUSCATOR_HOME, that specifies the location of Dotfuscator on a particular machine. DOTFUSCATOR_HOME is also appended to the system PATH environment variable (as long as there is room to add it).

If your system PATH environment variable was too long to append %DOTFUSCATOR_HOME%; during installation, you may want to reduce the length of the system path and then append %DOTFUSCATOR_HOME% to the system PATH yourself.

For side-by-side installs, the DOTFUSCATOR_HOME environment variable refers to whichever version of Dotfuscator was installed last. If you would like the variable to refer to another version, update the system environment variable to point to the install location of the other version.

When you uninstall Dotfuscator, the installer will unset DOTFUSCATOR_HOME and remove it from PATH, but only if the specified path matches the version being uninstalled. If you have other versions of Dotfuscator installed, you may want to reconfigure DOTFUSCATOR_HOME to point to one of those versions.

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