Where does the .NET framework come from? Visual Studio or Windows?

Question

I am learning C# and have installed Visual Studio 2012 on a PC running Windows 7.

I can now browse to the C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET directory.

My first question is:

Does Visual Studio ship with the .NET directory, or does Visual Studio just access the directory that already exists on a computer running Windows 7?

My second related question is:

The highest numbered folder at the location C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\ is v4.0.30319. This confuses me because the version number associated with Visual Studio 2012 in the table at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework#History is 4.5.50709.17929.

So why do I not have a folder with that higher version number if I installed Visual Studio a couple of weeks ago?

Answer 1

Windows 7 comes with .NET 3.5 SP1. Visual Studio does not ship with .NET.. however, .NET ships with Visual Studio (obviously, so you can develop on it).

The version number didn't change between 4 and 4.5 .. I cannot remember the reason why (I think it had something to do with it being an in-place upgrade.. or something). This is why the folder version numbering is the same.

EDIT:

You can look here for a better explanation of the .NET 4/4.5 versioning and what the exact revision numbers mean: https://stackoverflow.com/a/12972517/1517578