What does the Visual Studio “Any CPU” target mean?

Question

I have some confusion related to the .NET platform build options in Visual Studio 2008.

What is the \"Any CPU\" compilation target, and what sort of files does it ge

Answer 1

Here's a quick overview that explains the different build targets.

From my own experience, if you're looking to build a project that will run on both x86 and x64 platforms, and you don't have any specific x64 optimizations, I'd change the build to specifically say "x86."

The reason for this is sometimes you can get some DLL files that collide or some code that winds up crashing WoW in the x64 environment. By specifically specifying x86, the x64 OS will treat the application as a pure x86 application and make sure everything runs smoothly.