Here’s the situation:
I’m currently working on a substantially large .Net application that makes use of Crystal Reports, as well as a few other 32-bit libraries (to do with things like signature pads). We are currently using an older version of Crystal Reports (in Visual Studio 2005.. I know, it’s old. They will eventually upgrade). We currently do separate builds for 32-bit machines and for 64-bit machines. The build for 32-bit machines are target the AnyCPU platform while the build for 64-bit machines target the x86 platform. This is done so that when the application runs on a 64-bit machine the app will run as a 32-bit app and still be able to load the other 32-bit libraries.
I’m getting quite tired of having to maintain two separate builds (the build process is a bit of a mess as it is). My thought is that I’d like to only do a build that targets the x86 platform, as then everything would still continue to work, but it would save having to maintain separate builds for 32-bit and 64-bit machines.
My question is this: Is it possible to force a 32-bit install of Crystal Reports on a 64-bit machine? Will an application that is built for the x86 platform continue to work against a 32 bit version of Crystal Reports on a 64-bit machine?
Is what I am looking to do possible, or am I missing something else? I feel like I’m missing – as though the previous developers didn’t do this for some obvious reason.
If your “64-bit” build is set to x86 (32-bit) and your “32-bit” build only runs in x86 (32-bit) because there is no 64-bit, the builds are basically identical and there’s no need for two builds. I build my Crystal Reports app as x86, and pre-install the 32-bit Crystal msi. It works like a champ on both 64-bit and 32-bit machines.