Where is the Winforms "application framework" in C# that exists in VB.NET?

Question

I've developed VB.NET Winforms projects in the past that use the "Windows Application Framework" settings, which are found on the "Application" tab in the project properties:

One particularly useful feature of this is the ability to make a single-instance application with one click of a checkbox. This works very well. Here is the C# project properties for a Winforms project:

There's nothing about the application framework, neither on the "Application" tab nor elsewhere. All the references I've found to "single instance" applications talk about using a custom solution with a mutex. I can't find any information about why there is no equivalent application framework in C# projects. Can anyone shed some light on this?

Answer 1

These properties are exclusively available in VB.Net project types. If you want to utilize these VB.Net properties in C# project then you need to add reference to Microsoft.VisualBasic assembly and create your custom App class inherited from Microsoft.VisualBasic.ApplicationServices.WindowsFormsApplicationBase to access the protected members that appears in the project properties and run your windows form application via your custom app class instead of C# Application class methods.

static class Program
{
    [STAThread]
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var app = new MyApp(new Form1());
        app.Run(args);
    }
}

internal class MyApp : Microsoft.VisualBasic.ApplicationServices.WindowsFormsApplicationBase
{
    public MyApp(Form mainForm)
    {
        this.EnableVisualStyles = true;
        this.SaveMySettingsOnExit = true;
        this.IsSingleInstance = true;
        this.MainForm = mainForm;
    }
}

Microsoft.VisualBasic.ApplicationServices.WindowsFormsApplicationBase provides predefined features to an winform application that are only available via VB.Net. There many predefined class libraries in Microsoft.VisualBasic assembly that are not available in C#.