Synergy DBL Integration Requirements

This page lists system requirements for Synergy DBL Integration for Visual Studio (SDI). It includes the following:

General system requirements for SDI
Remote debugging requirements for Synergy .NET
Notes on .NET Framework
Notes on .NET Core and .NET Standard
Notes on .NET development for Linux
Notes on traditional Synergy for Linux and OpenVMS

This page lists required third-party products, but it does not list requirements for third-party products. For example, it lists the minimum version of Mono for Synergy applications on Linux, but it does not list Mono’s requirements (such as the minimum version of glibc needed for a given version of Mono). See third-party product documentation for information on these requirements.

For information on developing Synergy applications in Visual Studio, see Synergy in Visual Studio.

For information on developing Synergy applications for .NET, see Synergy .NET Development. For information on Synergy .NET development requirements, see Synergy .NET Requirements in the Synergy/DE documentation.

For information on Synergex.SynergyDE.synrnt, a NuGet package that contains runtime libraries required for device applications. See www.synergex.com/synrnt-nuget-package

General system requirements for SDI

The following are required and must be installed on a 64-bit Windows machine before SDI is installed on that machine. (SDI cannot be installed on 32-bit systems.)

One of the following:
- Windows 8 or higher
- Windows Server 2012 or higher
.NET Framework 4.7.2 or higher
Synergy/DE version 10.3.3d or higher.
- The REV11 Licensing Upgrade Package is required if you have a version of Synergy/DE prior to the 11.0.4 beta. This package must be installed on the machine that services the licenses (the machine on which synd is running). For more information, see the Synergy/DE REV11 Licensing FAQ and Synergy/DE 11 pages on the Synergex web site, and see Using the licensing upgrade package on Windows or Using the licensing upgrade package on UNIX in the Synergy/DE documentation.
- To install SDI, both the 32-bit and the 64-bit versions of Synergy/DE must be installed.
- We recommend installing the latest version of SDI and Synergy/DE on development machines. Then, if you deploy to systems with older versions of Synergy/DE, target these versions when you build, and test on other systems (e.g., on virtual machines) using remote debugging.
- For traditional Synergy, we recommend installing the latest version of SDI and Synergy/DE on development machines. The latest version of Synergy/DE provides the best debugging experience in Visual Studio, even if your applications target only older versions of the Synergy runtime.
One or more of the following:
- Visual Studio 2019 (version 16.1 or higher is recommended) with the “.NET desktop development” workload, which is available from the Visual Studio Installer. SDI 11.0.1 or higher is required for Visual Studio 2019.
- Visual Studio 2017 version 15.8 or higher with the “.NET desktop development” workload, which is available from the Visual Studio Installer. SDI 10.3.3f-2499 or higher is required for Visual Studio 2017.
You can install SDI on a machine that has MSBuild but not Visual Studio by selecting only the “MSBuild Components” option for the SDI installation. This installs only the SDI components required to build traditional Synergy and Synergy .NET applications and libraries from the command line.
Microsoft Windows SDK 7, 8, 8.1, or 10 is required if projects use resource files (e.g., icon files for WPF). SDI uses the rc.exe component of Windows SDK for these files.

Note the following:

We recommend installing SDI on a machine with more than 8 GB of memory. This makes multi-core processing possible when loading large Synergy projects.
Projects that use device licensing or asynchronous processing must target .NET Framework 4.5 or higher.

For better performance, exclude the following programs from virus scanning: dbl.exe, dblnet.exe, dblnet64.exe, dblproto.exe, and devenv.exe. Also exclude the location used for prototype files (.dbp), and temporary Visual Studio files from virus scanning. (Alternatively you can exclude the .dbp extension and the extensions of .include files and repository files–e.g., .ism and .is1.)

Remote debugging requirements for Synergy .NET

To use remote debugging with a Synergy .NET application, the remote system must have Remote Tools for Visual Studio 2017 or 2019. To examine Synergy variables as you debug remotely, you must also install the Synergy .NET Remote Debugger on the remote system. See Debugging Synergy .NET Code in the Synergy/DE documentation for more information.

Notes on .NET Framework

To deploy a Synergy .NET application for Microsoft .NET Framework, target systems must have .NET Framework and Synergy/DE Professional Series (which includes the Synergy .NET runtime libraries).

Notes on .NET Core and .NET Standard

SDI supports .NET Core 2.1 or higher and .NET Standard 2.0 or higher.
The following are required for Synergy .NET Core and .NET Standard development:

SDI 10.3.3f or higher
Visual Studio 2017 version 15.8 or higher with the “.NET Core cross-platform development” workload

NOTE: Upgrading to a new version of SDI does not upgrade compiler or runtime tools for existing .NET Core or .NET Standard projects. The following NuGet packages must be updated explicitly for these projects: Synergex.SynergyDE.synrnt and Synergex.SynergyDE.Build. To upgrade NuGet packages for existing projects, use the NuGet Package Manager. See Microsoft documentation for more information (e.g., Install and manage packages in Visual Studio using the NuGet Package Manager).

For information on deploying .NET Core applications, see Synergy .NET Requirements in the Synergy/DE documentation.

Notes on .NET development for Linux

To deploy an application that runs under Mono on Linux, you must have a Linux system with Mono 3.2.8 or higher and Synergy/DE 10.3.1b or higher. (Note that the OS must natively support the Mono version. Downloading Mono sources and building them on the Linux machine will result in an unsupported configuration.)

Once you have installed Synergy/DE, use GACUTIL to add the runtime libraries (synrnt.dll) to the global assembly cache or make sure this file is in the same folder as your application binaries. The synrnt.dll file is in the dbl/bin directory for your Synergy/DE installation. Use the following command to add synrnt.dll to the global assembly cache:

sudo GACUTIL -i synrnt.dll

For information on developing for Linux, see Synergy .NET Development and Developing for .NET on Linux in the Synergy/DE documentation.

Notes on traditional Synergy for Linux and OpenVMS

For a traditional Synergy Linux application, you’ll need to run the application on a Linux machine and then use remote debugging to debug the application from Visual Studio or use standard traditional Synergy debugging on the Linux machine. In either case, the Linux machine must have the version of SDE that the application was built for (set with the “Target Synergy runtime” setting on the Build page of Visual Studio project properties).

For a traditional Synergy OpenVMS application, you may be able to do preliminary debugging with files built on Windows, but for final builds and full debugging you’ll need to build and run the application on an OpenVMS machine and then use remote debugging (to debug the application from Visual Studio) or use standard traditional Synergy debugging on the OpenVMS machine. In either case, the OpenVMS machine must have the version of SDE that the application was built for (set with the “Target Synergy runtime” setting on the Build page of project properties). Additionally, if code for OpenVMS includes DBL$ or SYS$ routines, the Visual Studio project with that code must reference the VmsCompatibility library (available for download at github.com/Synergex/VmsCompatibility) to be able to run on Windows. See Developing a traditional Synergy application in Synergy/DE documentation for more information.