(ActiveX/OLE) COM without the mscoree.dll?

[rsioson]

Scenario: Let's say you have users operating a standalone commercial (no access to source code) desktop application that can be extended through scripting and COM compliant objects. Is it possible to use VB.NET to customize the application? For example, if you wanted to develop a better "Insert Table" dialog for MSWord2000, you could write your DLL in VB6 and integrate it using a VBA macro and deploy the DLL/macro to all your users in an update... can you do the same with VB.NET?

There have been several posts regarding .NET and ActiveX, and thusfar all that I've been able to discern is that VB.NET won't produce ActiveX components.

However, I do know that VB.NET can make COM compliant objects by compiling a release build with the "Register for COM Interop" feature enabled (under the Project Properties of Visual Studio).

Unfortunately, the resulting DLL has a dependency on "mscoree.dll", which in turn needs the .NET framework. This means that the DLL is usable on the development machine, but it cannot be deployed on a machine that doesn't have the .NET framework installed.

Does anyone know of an option in VB.NET to produce a COM compliant DLL that doesn't need the .NET framework?

Or maybe someone knows of some licensing details that I missed out on, whereby we're allowed to deploy the .NET framework on every user machine (which I would loathe to do anyway... for many reasons)?

Thanks,
Roehl