What, exactly, are the dependencies that the latest version of BouncyCastle C# .NET 4.61 relies on?

[yyr57695]

I've integrated BouncyCastle into several of my games to help prevent against cheating and hacks. The games are available via Steam.

For many years I've been using the very outdated 1.7 version (from 2011) but recently I figured I should take advantage of recent improvements and include the latest version instead.

When I attempted this, I received a report from a Japanese user that he was now unable to start the game. He went as far as to completely wipe his computer and reinstall a fresh copy of Windows 11, but was still unable to start the game, even after installing the runtime for .NET Framework 4.6.2 and 4.8.1. I'm located in the USA; I tried a fresh install of Windows 11 and did not have any trouble launching the game.

When I uploaded a build that simply replaced the new version of the BouncyCastle library with the old 2011 version, this user was once again able to launch the game. You can peek at the discussion I had with this user here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/640290/eventcomments/598514808890925615?snr=2_9_100000_

So...I'm trying to figure out exactly what BouncyCastle needs in order to run that would not be included in a new Japanese Windows 11 install. Any advice or hints would be greatly appreciated. The 2011 version still works, but I would love to use something newer, lol.

[uniblab]

4.6.1 No Longer Supported BY MS

It should first be noted that .Net Framework 4.6.1 is out of support. Which means that's something your client will not have on his system under a default installation. This means they might need to manually download and install the runtime.

• https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet-framework
• https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet-framework/thank-you/net461-web-installer
• https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet-framework/thank-you/net461-offline-installer

.Net Framework

• .Net Framework 4.6.1 runtime

Assemblies

• mscorlib 4.0.0
• System 4.0.0
• System.Core 4.0.0
• System.Data 4.0.0
• System.Drawing 4.0.0
• System.IO.Compression.FileSystem 4.0.0
• System.Numerics 4.0.0
• System.RuntimeSerialization 4.0.0
• System.Xml 4.0.0
• System.Xml.Linq 4.0.0

Direct Nuget Packages

• Microsoft.NETFramework.ReferenceAssemblies 1.0.3
• Microsoft.SourceLink.GitHub 8.0.0
• Nerdbank.GitVersioning 3.7.115

Transitive Nuget Packages

• Microsoft.Build.Tasks.Git 8.0.0
• Microsoft.NETFramework.ReferenceAssemblies.net461 1.0.3
• Microsoft.SourceLink.Common 8.0.0

I was able to make this list simply by opening the project. I hope that helps!

I did submit a PR, #610 , which brings in a lot more build targets and this might be exactly what you need to better support your clients. If possible, please review PR #610 because I think this will resolve your versioning issues perfectly.

[peterdettman]

@yyr57695 I would suspect some issue involving the Japanese locale (probably calendar), but it will be difficult to address without some kind of exception/error output from the attempted launch.

Is your main application also in .NET or are you launching a separate process involving BouncyCastle? Is there console output or any other kind of log that could be collected? Have you tried setting your locale to Japanese to reproduce the issue?

If the issue is related to the calendar you could expect problems also with Thai for example.