Silent crash (FileLoadException) when running apps built with 6.0.200

[caesay]

Describe the bug

When running a UI (WinForms or WPF) application which was compiled with dotnet 6.0.2, on a Windows computer with only dotnet 6.0.0 or 6.0.1 Desktop Runtime installed, the program has a fatal silent crash on start-up (no dialogs or warnings to download dotnet). Compiling the application with an older version of the SDK resolves the error. Subsequently installing dotnet 6.0.2 Desktop Runtime on the computer also resolves the error.

Checking event viewer reveals this error message:

Application: VidCoder.exe
CoreCLR Version: 6.0.121.56705
.NET Version: 6.0.1
Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception.
Exception Info: System.IO.FileLoadException: Could not load file or assembly 'PresentationFramework, Version=6.0.2.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35'. The located assembly's manifest definition does not match the assembly reference. (0x80131040)
File name: 'PresentationFramework, Version=6.0.2.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35'

This is particularly problematic because it's a silent crash for end users, meaning they will file bug reports with developers, and the issue will not be apparent to the developer (because the developer will have 6.0.2 installed and can't reproduce the problem).

The ideal behaviour is that apps compiled with 6.0.200 installed would also run on computers with 6.0.0 or 6.0.1 installed.

To Reproduce

• Create a WPF application
• Target framework net6.0-windows10.0.19041.0
• Compile with dotnet publish -c Release -r win-x64 on a windows computer with the latest SDK installed.
• Verify with ILSpy that entry dll now has a hard reference to PresentationCore 6.0.2 (among other 6.0.2 references) - image below
• Run application on computer with dotnet 6.0.0 or 6.0.1 installed.
• Check event viewer to see reason for crash.

Image of AssemblyRef table:

[KalleOlaviNiemitalo]

The dependency problems were also reported as dotnet/wpf#6109 and dotnet/winforms#6663.

[caesay]

Looks like this issue is well covered in other repos esp dotnet/core#7176 so I will close this.