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Synergy DBL Integration 10.3.3f Requirements

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

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 not 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 Windows machine before SDI is installed on that machine:

  • One of the following:
    • Windows 7 SP1 or higher
    • Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 or higher (64-bit only)
  • Synergy/DE version 10.3.1b or higher. (SDI can be installed with Synergy/DE 10.1.1d, but we recommend at least Synergy/DE 10.3.1b.)
    • 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.
    • On a 64-bit machine, only the 64-bit version of Synergy/DE is required. But to run and debug 32-bit Synergy applications, you must also install 32-bit Synergy/DE.
    • To debug traditional Synergy, you must use version SDI 10.3.3d or higher. However, 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 2017 version 15.8 or higher with the “.NET desktop development” workload (available from the Visual Studio Installer). SDI 10.3.3f-2499 or higher is required for Visual Studio 2017.
    • Visual Studio 2015 Update 2 (see note below) or Update 3 (recommended). SDI 10.3.1b-1837 or higher is required for Visual Studio 2015 Update 2. SDI 10.3.3a or higher is required for Visual Studio 2015 Update 3.

    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.
  • If you install SDI on a system with Visual Studio 2015 Update 2, you must reboot the system to complete the installation (due to a Microsoft issue).
  • Visual Studio Express is not supported.
  • Visual Studio Shell is not supported
  • 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, dbl64.exe, dblnet.exe, dblnet64.exe, dblproto.exe, dblproto64.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.)

Note the following for SDI help topics:

  • With Visual Studio 2017, SDI help topics are installed only if the Help Viewer component of Visual Studio is installed before you install SDI. If you install SDI on a system that does not have the Help Viewer component, you can get SDI help by installing the Help Viewer component and then repairing the SDI installation. (Use the Repair option for the SDI entry in the Programs and Features window for Windows Control Panel.)
  • To use Help > View Help to access Synergy topics, Visual Studio must be set to use local help (set help to “Launch in Help Viewer”). See Synergex KnowledgeBase article 100002006 for more information.
  • Do not install SDI while help is being downloaded for Visual Studio. If you do, SDI will be installed without any of its help topics. See Synergex KnowledgeBase article 100002081 for more information.

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

For information on deploying .NET Core applications, see Synergy .NET Requirements.

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 Project Designer).

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 Designer). 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.