Downgrade Visual Studio 2015 to 2008 - visual-studio

I have a Visual Studio 2008 *.sln file. However, I can't open it using Visual Studio 2008 Express. It is unable to load the projects. I suspect it might be limited functionalities in the Express edition.
I also have an existing copy of Visual Studio 2015. Do I need to "downgrade" my Visual Studio 2015 to 2008 in order to open the *.sln file?
Edit 1:
Edit 2:

You dont need to downgrade as all version of Visual Studio can exist side by side.
You can easily install the full Visual Studio 2008 on the same machine as Visual Studio 2015. If you have an MSDN licence then you can just download 2008 and install..

Related

Is there a Visual Studio Installer Project type for Visual Studio 2019?

I am trying to build a VS 2017 solution which includes a Visual Studio Installer Project with the just released Visual Studio Pro 2019. Of course, when I tried to open the solution I got an error because there was not Visual Studio Installer project type in VS 2019. And, I cant find a place to load it from.
How do I add a Visual Studio Installer Project type in the released version of VS 2019?
Install the addin in Visual Studio 2019:
This extension provides the same functionality that currently exists
in Visual Studio 2015 for Visual Studio Installer projects. To use
this extension, you can either open the Extensions and Updates dialog,
select the online node, and search for "Visual Studio Installer
Projects Extension," or you can download directly from this page.
This extension is designed to work with Visual Studio 2017 and
Visual Studio 2019.

How to select the Visual Studio version to use on the build machine?

We have a buildmachine that currently has installed Visual Studio 2010 to compile our application.
Now we have moved to Visual Studio 2015 and developers have installed it on their machines and modified the solution so it works with 2015 but the previous versions will continue to build with 2010.
I was going to install Visual Studio 2015 on the build machine but I don't know how the build machine will know that the previous branches must be built with 2010 and the new ones with 2015. With some Msbuild settings? Just looking at the sln? By other means?
With some Msbuild settings? Just looking at the sln? By other means?
Open your .sln file with Notepad. Look for Format Version on the first line which correlates with a Visual Studio version.
•Format Version 11.00 is Visual Studio 2010
•Format Version 12.00 is Visual Studio 2013 && Visual Studio 2013
For visual studio 2013 and visual studio 2015, we could find the visual studio version on the third line. like this:
visual studio 2013: VisualStudioVersion = 12.0.30501.0
visual studio 2015: VisualStudioVersion = 14.0.25420.1
As far as I know it does it looking at the ToolsVersion on every .csproj. VisualStudio is not required as MsBuild and the compiler come with the .Net Framework.

Visual Studio 2015 Express and Visual SourceSafe 2005

I tried following this instruction. but I still cannot get sourceSafe to appear in the available plug in selection.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/Bb166193.aspx
I have two computer. Computer A and Computer B.
Computer A has Visual Studio 2013 Premium and Visual SourceSafe 2005.
and I can see the plug in in the selection
like this
Computer B has visual studio 2015 Express and Visual SourceSafe 2005. And this is all I see
Can you please help me how to add this plug in? Thank you
I install Visual Studio Community 2015 (make sure you use vs_community.exe) and SourceSafe option will be available.
I was using vs_Desktop.exe previously.
Make sure to select and download the community edition instead of the visual studio express for desktop
There is patch for Visual SourceSafe that once installed lets you see the SourceSafe plugin in the Visual Studio Tools|Source Control plugin list here it is
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=291
Hope this helps

About saving on visual studio 2013

Hi guys im using Microsoft Visual Studio 2013, but in my college, all of the computers using microsoft visual Studio 2012. Is there is possible if i save my project (from visual studio 2013) then i open it on visual studio 2012?
Visual Studio 2013 has a feature called "Solution Round Tripping", which means that a solution created in Visual Studio 2012, under certain circumstances, can be edited by both Visual Studio 2012 and 2013.
There are limitations though, as you can't open a solution in 2012 that uses new features or frameworks that are not available in 2012. Makes sense right? Generally, when you create the solution in 2012 and then open it in 2013, your chances are high.

Visual Studio 2013 Round-Tripping

I want to migrate a Visual Studio 2010 Solution so that I can work with Visual Studio 2013.
If I understand it right, due to the round-tripping feature of Visual Studio 2013,
there is no reason to convert the solution!? I can just open my old solution with
Visual Studio 2013 and can just work with it.
Is that right? Or is there a good reason or need to do a conversion to a
Visual Studio 2013 solution.
Or better: Is there any good reason to not stick with the old Visual Studio 2010 solution?
Visual Studio 2013 can open a sln file created by Visual Studio 2010. However, Visual Studio 2010 can not open a sln file created by Visual Studio 2013.
The easiest way to see this is to open the sln file in a text editor and look at the first 2 lines:
Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 12.00
# Visual Studio 2012
Visual Studio has a version setting in the header (this example is from VS 2012). An older version of the tool wont open the file.
Beyond that there aren't really any big differences in the file. There are certain project types (ie Project("{guid}") that aren't supported in older version of Visual Studio. For example a Visual Studio 2013 SDK project can only be opened with Visual Studio 2013.
To wrap up, if you have an existing Visual Studio 2010 sln file, there isn't really any need to change it. If you plan on opening it again in VS2010 then make sure you don't change it. Otherwise I wouldn't worry about it and just let VS do whatever makes VS happy.

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