Building Compact Framework applications with VS2010 (without VS2005) - visual-studio-2010

I want to perform a .NET CF 2.0 build using VS2010. I know it's not supported "normnally," but I've seen this answer: ( .NET Compact Framework with Visual Studio 2010? ) ...and I want to use that approach.
The blog post cited there says I need to modify the .csproj files for the .NET CF projects, to point to a particular Microsoft.CompactFramework.Common.targets . But I don't have that file.
I figured I needed to install the Windows Mobile 6 Standard SDK to get it.
I tried installing it and get this:
I have seen this question:
Windows Mobile 6 Standard SDK Refresh install issue on Visual Studio 2010 Professional Beta 2
I don't think the solution proposed there is workable for me. I do not have VS2008. I do not have VS2005. I have only VS2010, and I have no installable media for those other products.
I have also tried the administrative install (msiexec /a), but the resulting directory structure doesn't contain any files like Microsoft.CompactFramework.Common.targets .??
Q1:
Is there a way for me to install WM6 Standard SDK?
Q2: Anyone know the reg key that it looks for to determine if I have the appropriate pre-reqs?
Is this going to work if I just fiddle with my registry?
Q3: Is my assumption wrong? Really I want the Microsoft.CompactFramework.Common.targets file and its friends. Where can I get this? (I have no existing VS2008 machine to suck from)
Q4: Another approach I can think of is getting an eval version of VS2008, installing that into a VM, then installing the WM6 Std SDK there, then grabbing the Microsoft.CompactFramework.Common.targets file from that. Long way round. Is this gonna work and is it worth the trouble?
ANSWER
Here's the answer.
It is possible to build CF apps with VS2010, as outlined in Joel Fjorden's blog post. There are pre-requisites you need, in order to make this happen.
I believe the only official way to get the required files, including Microsoft.CompactFramework.Common.targets , Microsoft.CompactFramework.CSharp.targets , Microsoft.CompactFramework.VisualBasic.targets and Microsoft.CompactFramework.Build.Tasks.dll , is to install the related version of Visual Studio. These files are all version-specific, so to get the files for building for .NET CF 2.0, you need to install VS2005, and for .NET CF 3.5 you need to install VS2008. Installing VS2010 gives you neither. It works to use eval versions of the tools. It worked for me anyway.
If you are willing to go custom, you can simply copy these files from a working installation of VS2005 or VS2008 (or both), into the appropriate .NET directory, usually something like C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727 (change the version as appropriate). Chris Tacke has helpfully posted a link to the files you need. I don't know if copying these files violates the license for VS20?? , I am not a licensing expert.
You cannot get these files from the Windows Mobile SDK, as far as I can tell. Even so, you might still want a version-specific mobile SDK to get the emulators and skins and so on.
This is a basic "build" capability. It works but it doesn't give you designer support, debugging capability, built-in project templates, and so on. My advice to anyone who wants to do forward development on .NET CF is to use the tools that are geared toward those tasks - VS2005 or VS2008.
Thanks to Chris Tacke for posting a link for the files.

Not sure if it's any help, but the CF targets files from VS2008 can be found here. Let us know if you make any progress.

The "Power Toys for .NET Compact Framework" package (currently found at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=13442) also contains the required files.
Thought I'd leave that here since it's an official Microsoft download.

Related

Using Regionerate on VS2012, or alternative addin

I tend to use Regionerate quite extensively for reorganizing my code files. My only problem is I can't get it registered with VS2012. I've abandoned VS2010 fully in favour of VS2012 and it's galling to have to flip back just to run a macro to reorganize code files. I've never tried writing a VS addin before so I'm not at all familiar with the object model or how to register - seems the old addins are more complicated to install than the VS2010 extensions! I've also looked through the WIX setup XML and tried replicating the registry keys to no avail.
Does anyone know how to either register Regionerate with VS2012, or is there an alternative (free and which is maintained!) extension that provides the same functionality?
Two things needed for registration:
It looks like VS2012 doesn't read from the HKLM...\11.0\AutomationOptions key at runtime, only at first run. The corresponding key at HKCU...\11.0_Config\AutomationOptions needs to be set as well.
A new .AddIn file needs to be created with a Version of 11.0
If you do that, Regionerate will appear, but will hang Studio when you try to use it. The Regionerate code has a bad version check ("not equal" instead of "less than") that will get stuck in code that doesn't work for VS2010/2012. Unchecking "Automatically collapse regions" in Regionerate settings might be enough to avoid the bad code.
I made a new version that fixes the version check and has the correct install pieces for VS2012. You can download the installer and changed source files here:
https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=2FEB8D1988F04D77!565
This is what you need to do to make VS2012 compatible Regionerate (0.8.0.1) by Frank Racis work with Visual Studio 2013.
Modify this file: C:\Program Files (x86)\Regionerate\Regionerate.VS2012.AddIn
Change version from 11 to 12: <Version>12.0</Version>
Add the following string value in your registry:
Location: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0_Config\AutomationOptions\LookInFolders
Name: C:\Program Files (x86)\Regionerate\
CodeMaid is a free and actively developed alternative. It has nearly all the features of Regionerate, plus some new stuff. One thing I really like is setting it to organize and clean unsaved files every time I build.

How to publish my C++ application?

I made a game in C++, using Visual Studio 2010. For this game I'm using OpenGL and GLUT, IrrKlang, ODE and fltk (so a buch of libs and dlls). I also have a folder of sounds and some text files. All paths are relative and my application works well from the environment (both debug and release modes). The exe files won't work though.
How do I make an installer kit for my application? My solution includes two projects.
I've done this before with XNA projects, but now it's completely different. Please do not refer me to msdn because I've been there.
Thanks!
First you should decide on a setup authoring tool. Here is a list that can get you started: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_installation_software
After that, try creating an installer with that tool. Most of them have tutorials and documentation which may help. If you encounter problems, you can then ask more specific questions.

Planning to upgrade VS 2005 to VS 2010

I have installed VS 2010 and want to migrate all code written in VS 2005 to VS 2010.
Please note that we do not have VS 2008, all code are in C# 2.0 and Asp.net 2.0 only.
Can anyone please tell me now what all points need to be considered while migrating.
Update:
I have set target framework to 2.0 for all of my Libraries and web projects. It complies without any error!
However, when site opens in IE (Set to default.aspx), it gives me error as below:
InternalXmlHelper.vb(9) : error BC30560: 'ExtensionAttribute' is
ambiguous in the namespace 'System.Runtime.CompilerServices'.
<Global.System.Runtime.CompilerServices.ExtensionAttribute()> _
Keep all the target framework settings to .NET 2.0. This way, there should be no compilation problem at all.
The changes that you should see are the solution and project files only.
Start with known good solutions in source control (and label—you shouldn't need to go back, but easy to add an extra safety net).
Open each solution in VS2010, allow the conversion wizard to do the conversion.
Resolve any issues.
Honestly, if you're just upgrading VS 2010 you don't really need to consider much. Just keep backups (any real SCM product will do) and you're good. You don't have to upgrade your applications' runtime targets at all if you don't want to.
If you're building with CAS policy, you might run into issues with using MSBuild 4.0 to build you 2.0 applications. If you don't know what I'm talking about, never mind.
My advice is to make sure everyone's "checked in" to your source code provider, and run the conversion wizard and see how it goes.

Importing WinSCP source files into Microsoft Visual Studio 2008?

I am pretty new to programming. I would like to download an open source project and build it in my Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. In fact, I tried to import and build the application WinSCP:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/winscp/
But I didn’t work. Please can somebody help me and tell me which files do I have to download (from sourceforge) and how to import these into Microsoft Visual Studio in order to build the application. Thank you a lot. David
WinSCP seems to be written in Borland C++ Builder or whatever it's called today. It's not a standard C++ program and wouldn't compile in any other compiler because it uses special features only present in BCB. (It uses Delphi-style components, VCL and thus the __property keyword.)
Unfortunately, a lot of Open Source projects have very poor support for Microsoft's development tools. One project that comes to mind as being not too big and having workable MSVC project files is FreeType2, but that's a library and not an application, which probably makes it not very interesting for toying around with.
In support forum of winscp, they say, that you can't compile this project in Visual Studio.
Winscp appears to be a CPP project using a makefile instead of a sln file. VS uses SLN and *proj files to control builds and such. A good way to start would be to open VS, create a new console project (and solution) and go through some tutorials online.
If you really want to just see how a large project works in VS, grab something like IronRuby or IronPython or even something like the Witty twitter client.
In the general case, it is not possible to pour the C++ sources of a program into Visual Studio and expect it to work. C++ programming environments are far too different between operating systems for that. If you have a open-source program which builds and runs fine on Linux (for example), it may need several weeks (or months) or programming effort to make it run on Windows.

Where to download older versions of Visual C++ Express?

Is there a way to download older versions of Visual C++ Express? I'm particularly interested in Visual C++ 2005 Express (PRIOR SP1) and Visual C++ Toolkit 2003. I tried googling for them, but all the sites linked to microsoft.com, from where microsoft (for some reason) has taken them down.
If you want to link your application against the RTM (pre-SP1) version of the CRT (C runtime), you can apparently do that by defining _USE_RTM_VERSION in your project or on the compiler command line.
Also, deploying the CRT as a private assembly should still work with the SP1 version of the CRT. If that is what you have tried to do, posting more information about what went wrong might help you find a solution.
I also put this in a comment above, but just to make sure you don't miss it: if you're trying to do this because you're having problems with deployment and different versions of dll's, have a look at App does not run with VS 2008 SP1 DLLs, previous version works with RTM versions.
For those of us who find this answer looking for something after 2010 the following link worked as of this posting:
Older Visual Studio Downloads
Microsoft owns it. If they don't have a link anymore, I think you're out of luck.
I'll bet their web crawlers automatically page their lawyers if they ever find a copy on the web.
There is no good reason to run 2005 before SP1, you do realize 2005 /w SP1 compiled code will run the same for the end user, they don't need to install a .NET SP to run the code.
The SP fixes bugs, security holes and various improvements, virtually no functionality changes, you only loose by not using /w the latest SP.
From my personal experience the software compiled with SP1 doesn't simply work, if the end user hasn't installed the redistributables. Without SP1 however it is possible to get the .exe working if you distribute it with the required .dlls.

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