Target Audience and System Requirements

This guidance is intended for software architects and software developers. To get the greatest benefit from this guidance, you should have an understanding of the following technologies:

• Microsoft Visual C# or Microsoft Visual Basic .NET
• Microsoft .NET Framework

System Requirements and Prerequisites

The following are the system requirements for using Unity:

• Supported architectures: x86 and x64.
• Operating systems: Microsoft Windows 8, Microsoft Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012.
• Supported .NET Frameworks: Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5, .NET for Windows Store Apps (previously known as WinRT).

For a rich development environment, the following are recommended:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2012, Professional, Ultimate, or Express editions.

For Windows Phone 8 support, you need:

• Windows Phone SDK 8.0

To run the unit tests, the following are also required:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2012, Professional or Ultimate edition.

Unity and Windows Store apps

There are some limitations when you use Unity in a Windows Store app:

• You cannot use the Microsoft.Practices.Unity.UnityServiceLocator class.
• You cannot use the Unity.Configuration assembly.
• You cannot use the Unity.Interception and Unity.Interception.Configuration assemblies.