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Justin Van Patten from the BCL Team has put out an official list of what assemblies will be included in the RTM of the .NET Framework Client Profile. The usual suspects are there, and as expected, server-side technologies like ASP.NET are not. Note that that list is for RTM, the assemblies in the current beta differ slightly.

The .NET Framework Client Profile is a trimmed subset of the full .NET 3.5 SP1 framework, targeted towards desktop/client applications. The trimming offers a few benefits:

• smaller size will make it easier to deploy online
• trimmed API reduces the surface area of the framework on the client

The chosen subset might not make everyone happy, so there will be a mechanism in place to allow for an in-place upgrade of the client profile to the full .NET framework. That said, if you're distributing .NET client applications over the web, or are concerned about the footprint, I strongly encourage you to try to target the new profile first.

For another view of the client profile and more details, check out Troy Martez's post Introducing the .NET Framework Client Profile.

[ via Rob Relyea and Brad Abrams ]