First things first

KEYSTONE is pretty much a self contained implementation written entirely in C# and compiled to run in the .NET Platform.

The following software must be already installed on your Windows computer in order to develop KEYSTONE based business applications:

.NET Framework 4.5 or higher.

Any of the following supported IDEs:

• Windows: Visual Studio IDE for Windows
• Mac: Visual Studio IDE for Mac
• Linux: MonoDevelop

Install KEYSTONE for free

KEYSTONE is FREE to install and use in any project! Free is good ;)

To make the installation and update of KEYSTONE very easy, safe and reliable, its Foundation Components including Polaris, Almanac, Carbonite, Clockwork, Mystere and Quantum, are distributed through the Nuget Package Manager platform.

When creating your Visual Studio projects, be sure to set it to use .NET Framework 4.6 or higher! You can configure this property at any time in the Edit ❯ Property Pages of the project.

Once created your Visual Studio projects, you can install the Foundation Components by searching for the keystone keyword in the Nuget Package Manager. The Nuget Package Manager can be shown by right-clicking the References icon in the Solution Explorer and selecting the Manage Nuget Packages menu.

As an alternate installation method, you can use the command line interface called Package Manager Console located in the Tools ❯ Nuget Package Manager ❯ Package Manager Console menu. From that console write the following command to install the KEYSTONE Foundation Components, just replace the [foundation component] placeholder with the desired component name.

Install-Package [foundation component]
                    

You are all good to go!

KEYSTONE is a development framework designed to assist you in the creation of great applications at lightning speed and without compromising architectural value. Following its architectural prescriptions we can use Visual Studio to create an application solution that you can use as a baseline template for future projects.