CallerMemberName in .NET 4.0 not working

Question

I am trying to use CallerMemberName attribute in .NET 4.0 via BCL portability pack. It is always returning an empty string instead of the member name. What am I doing wrong?

public partial class Form1 : Form
{
    public Form1()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        MessageBox.Show(new class2().CallMe);
    }
}

public class class2
{
    public string CallMe 
    {
        get
        {
            return HelpMe();
        }
    }

    private string HelpMe([CallerMemberName] string param = "")
    {
        return param;
    }
}

Answer 1

I found the solution, though it's not useful to me. You need to install KB2468871 on top of .NET Framework 4 to be able to use caller info attributes. Unfortunately, I can't ask each developer to remember to install it when they setup development environment.

Answer 2

As I know, CallerMemberName is supported from .Net 4.5 You should not use it in .Net 4.0

Someone implemented this in .Net 4.0 using StackTrace. for example: http://www.journeyintocode.com/2013/04/callermembername-net-40.html

BUT, I do NOT recommend you to use the StackTrace since there could be a performance hit. Using StackTrace to get the caller name is very very slow. And this works in Debug, in release you cannot be sure whether StackTrace is "correct" or not.

So, my suggestion is: Just use CallerMemberName in .Net 4.5 or later version. In the early version of .Net, there isn't any foolproof or fast way of doing this.

Answer 3

Targeting 4.0 works just fine if you add:

namespace System.Runtime.CompilerServices {
    sealed class CallerMemberNameAttribute : Attribute { }
}