Expand the sections below for more details regarding Protection PLUS 5 SDK system requirements.
General Development Requirements
A screen resolution of 1024x768 pixels or larger is required for sample applications, documentation, and supporting applications. A higher screen resolution is necessary for text sizes larger than the default (96 pixels-per-inch in Windows).
PLUSManaged Requirements
PLUSManaged requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or higher to operate, and consequently, the PLUSManaged library shares the system requirements with the version of the Microsoft .NET Framework with which it is used.
The Microsoft .NET Compact Framework, versions of the Microsoft .NET Framework that target mobile platforms and devices, and versions of the Mono Framework that target mobile platforms and devices are not supported.
If your application uses the Mono framework, PLUSManaged will operate under Mono versions 2.8 or later, but at least Mono version 5.0.0 is required for SSL/TLS support.
When using PLUSManaged in Mono, and especially in platforms other than Microsoft Windows, it is important to note that certain features are not supported. This includes:
When using Network Floating Licensing features (via the NetworkSemaphore class) with protected applications, Windows Vista/Server 2008 or later is required for both the client computers accessing the protected application, and the file server hosting the share where the semaphore files will be stored.
Visual Studio 2005 or later (with the latest service packs and updates available) is required when developing for the Microsoft .NET Framework. Xamarin Studio or MonoDevelop 2.8 or later is required if developing for the Mono framework.
When developing with Visual Studio 2010, Service Pack 1 is required.
Using the latest service pack and updates available for the applicable version(s) of Visual Studio is strongly recommended.
PLUSManaged for .NET Standard Requirements
The Microsoft .NET Standard is a specification of .NET APIs intended to be supported on multiple platforms. PLUSManaged for .NET Standard adheres to the .NET Standard 2.0 specification and requires any of the following platform versions or higher.
| .NET Core | 2.0 |
| .NET Framework | 4.6.1* |
| Mono | 5.4 |
| Xamarin.iOS | 10.14 |
| Xamarin.Mac | 3.8 |
| Xamarin.Android | 8.0 |
| Universal Windows Platform | 10.0.16299 |
See Microsoft's documentation for details.
* .NET 4.6.1, .NET 4.6.2, .NET 4.7 and .NET 4.7.1 all have partial .NET Standard 2.0 support, yet they are .NET Standard 2.0 compliant by adding additional runtime dependencies into your output folder to provide the missing functionality. NuGet generally will handle automatically adding the missing dependencies and changes needed in the application's app.config file. When targeting the .NET Framework, it is highly recommended to target .NET Framework 4.7.2 which provides full .NET Standard 2.0 compliance and does not require additional dependencies
When using PLUSManaged for .NET Standard it is important to note that certain features are not supported. This includes:
PLUSManagedGui Requirements
PLUSManagedGui requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or higher to operate, and consequently, the PLUSManagedGui library shares the system requirements with the version of the Microsoft .NET Framework with which it is used. The Microsoft .NET Compact Framework, and versions of the Microsoft .NET Framework that target mobile platforms and devices are not supported.
A minimum screen resolution of 800x600 is required, though 1024x768 is the recommended minimum. A higher screen resolution is necessary for text sizes larger than the default (96 pixels-per-inch in Windows).
Using PLUSManagedGui in the Mono framework is not supported.
For development environments, Visual Studio 2005 or later (with the latest service packs and updates available) is required, and Visual Studio 2010 or later is recommended for PLUSManagedGui.
When developing with Visual Studio 2010, Service Pack 1 is required.
Using the latest service pack and updates available for the applicable version(s) of Visual Studio is strongly recommended.
When developing applications using PLUSManaged for .NET Standard, generally Visual Studio 2017 is the minimum requirement depending on the platform. For example, .NET Core 2.0 requires Visual Studio 2017.
PLUSNative Requirements
An x86 compatible processor is required for 32 bit applications, or an x86_64 compatible processor is required for 64 bit applications.
Popular distributions supported include:
Any software using 32 bit time_t values, including 32 bit Linux and macOS applications and libraries, may fail when using dates later than January 18, 2038, or dates earlier than December 13, 1901.
With versions 8.0 (Visual Studio 2005) and later of Microsoft Visual C++ compilers, 32 bit Windows applications use 64 bit time_t values. If your software is compiled using a different or older compiler or C runtime library, then your 32 bit software may be subject to the limitations noted above.
Development System Recommendations
Some recommendations for your development systems are below. These tools are not required, and do require an initial investment in time and effort (particularly if you do not already use these tools); however, these tools can save you a great deal of time and headache.
System Settings and Policies
There are some system and domain policy settings, which seem to only be encountered on rare occasion, that can prevent Protection PLUS 5 SDK cryptographic routines from functioning. In particular, security policies which affect what algorithms may be used with the Windows Crypto API can impact the Protection PLUS 5 SDK APIs (PLUSManaged and PLUSNative) as well.
One example would be if a system's or domain's policy was configured to strictly adhere to a FIPS 140 standard, which only allows the use of very specific cryptographic algorithms. Problems can arise when strictly adhering to older versions of the standard (such as FIPS 140-1), which prevent the use of newer, stronger algorithms which have been approved by NIST in later versions of the standard. Protection PLUS 5 SDK presently requires FIPS 140-2 with Annex A so that it may leverage strong cryptographic algorithms. Additionally, even though PLUSManaged uses FIPS 140-2 approved algorithms, it is not able to use certified implementations for all algorithms while maintaining compatibility with earlier versions of the .NET Framework (2.0 and 3.0). The standard version of PLUSManaged will consequently not function properly on Windows when restricting the system to only use certified implementations. However, a special build of PLUSManaged has been added as of version 5.14.2.0, which is the Library\FIPS folder in the installation directory. This special version does use FIPS certified implementations of the required encryption algorithms, but only supports .NET Framework version 3.5 and later.