I have around 50 projects in Visual Studio 2005 that I am building a new development machine for and I'd like to slowly move those projects to VS 2008 but also have 2010 available for select new projects.
Can this work? Are there any gotchas for this sort of setup? Any general advice for running multiple versions of Visual Studio on the same system would be greatly appreciated. Specifically related to managing a controlled migration of projects to new versions but being able to selectively keep some on old versions.
I've got 7.1, 8, and 9 installed at the same time (well, and VB part of 6 as well) and I've not really had a problem opening projects file in the wrong version. The Visual Studio Solution files is "associated" with a particular version even if they all have the same extension of .sln, as you can see from its little icon. Microsoft Visual Studio Version Selector seems to handle individual project files (.vcproj) fine as well.
The only thing I've had is the individual source code files not opening up in the latest version like I want, but that's easily fixed with the click of a little button in VS Opions.
Microsoft have this to say:
Visual Studio supports the installation of Visual Studio .NET 2002, 2003, ... on the same computer.
In general, you should install the earliest release of Visual Studio first, and then install subsequent versions of Visual Studio in the order in which they were released.
Make sure when you open up the 2005 files you're doing it in 2005. To open them in another would require a conversion which would render them incompatible with the older compiler set-up. To aid this, structure whatever workspace you're using into 2005, 2008, and 2010 so as to minimize accidental chance of this.
Second, when you double click to open the projects, it will invariably attempt to open them with 2010. You'll have to start with VS#### instead of the solution/project unless you're in the 2010 workspace.
I have VC6, VB6, VS 2008, and VS2010 RC installed on Windows Vista. I cannot double click on the VC6 dsp files without VS2010 opening and asking to perform the conversion. The 2008 C# projects open in 2008 as long as I use the solution file. The 2008 project file opens in 2010 instead of 2008 even though the version selector is the default program. Most of the time I try to remember to open the desired version of Visual Studio and then open the project.
You can mitigate some of these issues by changing the default program associations in the control panel or the registry.
Update: This setup works on Windows 7 x64, with the addition of VS2013.
Yes it can work. I'm not sure if you have to install them in a particular order... but install them in order of the versions... 2005, 2008, 2010. Should be good to go.
I can't speak for 2010, but I have run 2005 and 2008 at the same time on my system without any fuss.
And I made the double-click mistake that wheaties warns about more than once :(
I have VS2005 & VS2008 running without any issues. I have had problems when working with betas, express editions & am assuming you don't have them.
I would say refrain from making too many changes to the setup of these editions, it should be fine.
I also had the same doubt. I work at my company which is still on VS 2008 and I want to personally use the VS 2010 and not risk the 2008. I installed the 2010 and it worked fine with the 2008. Just make sure you note the projects that are in 2005 and open them with the same accordingly.
The reason why it works is simple: if you open your solution file in Notepad, you'll see which version of VS is related to your project.
Related
OK, can't find a solution to this.
A client sent me his Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web project. I have Microsoft Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 installed.
I get an error when I try to open his project saying "this project is not compatible with the current version of visual studio".
We'll be passing the project back & forth quite a bit, so I need a solution that meets that need please.
So, I figure I may be able to modify the project with a text editor to let me open it. If so, do I have to re-edit it back when I send it back to him?
Can I install VS Express 2012 for Web on a machine that already has VS Ultimate 2010 on it without any conflicts? Can I open it if I install VS 2012 Ultimate (keeping 2010 as well)?
I have another client that uses 2010, so whatever I do, I need to be able to still support him.
If I can't have 2 versions installed at the same time, and can't easily edit a file to make it compatible, then I guess my last option is a virtual machine.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
Microsoft Visual Studio has backwards compatibility since the version 2010 SP1.
So in this case you just need update your Visual Studio 2010 to SP1 and it will understand the new way files are versioned.
Based on my experience:
You do can edit it with a text file and send it back, but it's not compiled yet so it's your partners job.
Maybe, just maybe, you can edit the .sln and .(whatever the project file extension is) file to meet your VS10 env (I think it's going to be a bumpy road though)
Yes, I'm pretty sure you can have VS 10 and VS 12 installed on same machine, note that you have to have .Net 4.0 and .Net 4.5
can i install and use, visual studio 2008 and visual studio 2010 on the same windows xp/vista
have visual studio 2008 installed and working
wnat to install visual studio 2010 and use with 2008,
some solutions on 08 and some on 10..
any problems possible?
Yes, you can!
Can't add anything else, honestly! :)
Well, I personally have 2005, 2008 and 2010 installed on the same workstation, for various needs and projects. Works without any problem!
No problems at all running both Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 side-by-side. My development box is currently set up this way.
Solutions will automatically open in the version of Visual Studio that they were created in. You can manually choose to open them in a newer version, but you will need to update them. A wizard will automatically appear that guides you through the process.
Opening a solution saved with a newer version of VS in an older version is not a supported scenario.
But there is a workaround: simply open the *.sln file in a text editor (like Notepad) and decrement the version number by 1. You'll have to do the same thing for each of the project files.
I had the same problem with converting a Visual Studio 2008 project to 2010, which made the program could not compile at all with every measure i took.. then I installed Visual Studio 2008 again and it turns out they can be installed in the same computer and work, but you need to open visual basic 2008 manually if you want to develop a project there..
You shouldn't have any problems unless you try to develop for Windows Phone 7, which you can't currently, and may never be able to, do in Windows XP.
I use Visual Studio 2k8 Pro Edition at home and I have loaded it with a lot of important addins customised for my development.
If I get VS2010 Pro Edition, would all of these plugins fail to work? Is this a plugin-related matter or down to Visual Studio itself? E.g. Visual Studio 2010 may just be based on the 2008 version but with enhancements (is it?).
Thanks
You can always download the beta and try them out.
Impossible to say without seeing it in practice. Seriously. We don't know which plug-ins you're using so we've no idea how they're going to react to a new VS version...
But even you had told us, you'd save yourself a lot of time just installing VS 2010 in a VM and trying your plug-ins out.
Nope at least Resharper 4.5 is not working in VS2010
No. Unmanaged addins are COM objects that are tied to the version of the IDE environment. For the most part, the addins just need to be rebuilt with only minor changes though.
EDIT: Addins that go beyond using the standard addin interfaces though will probably require retooling for the VS2010 environment.
EDIT 2: Managed addins are typically deployed using .addin files which are sometimes located in "%APPDATA%\Microsoft\MSEnvShared\Addins". The .addin file is an xml file that can be edited by hand. You can try adding a new HostApplication element to the file for a particular managed addin - and specify version 10.0.
Here is the info on the resharper compatibility:
http://blogs.jetbrains.com/dotnet/2009/05/preview-of-resharper-for-visual-studio-2010-coming-soon/
(Basically they will have a preview release in June)
What reasons are there for continuing to run Visual Studio 2005 when 2008 is available?
I work on a project where the environment is dictated to be Visual Studio 2005. Are there good technical reasons for this? Can I use Visual Studio 2008 and build an app that is 100% indistinguishable from the same app build with Visual Studio 2005?
I think there are two questions here
Can I use VS2008 to create apps compatible with VS2005
Generally speaking the answer is yes. I do this frequently with several internal and external hobby projects with great success. You may encounter an odd ball tooling issue but so far none has cropped up for me.
Is there any reason not to use VS2008 over VS2005
The best reason I can think of is a large developer environment. Once you make the switch to using VS2008, it will upgrade all of the projects in your solution to the new format. This will no longer be usable for anyone using VS2005. They will be forced to upgrade or maintain parrallel versions of the project file. In general, I find it's best to upgrade in groups rather than individuals.
We are currently migrating from 2005 to 2008. If you open and save a project while in VS2008, you will not be able to open that solution/project in VS2005 (at least we couldn't find a way easily). If the rest of your team is still in 2005, you should stay there. You CAN, however set up a project in 2008 and keep it compatible with 2005... as long as everyone opening it is using 2008. You keep the .NET version at 2.5, and don't convert most of the stuff that it wants you to convert.
The only time you CAN'T migrate to 2008 is if you are using a report project and SQL Server 2005. VS2008 will only let you integrate a report project with SQL Server 2008. What did we do?
We migrated to 2008 and all the Team Server stuff, except for the database and reporting. Those we kept on 2005, and so I end up having to open both versions on a daily basis... but that's why they pay me the (somewhat??) big bucks!
Not really, the new version of Visual Studio has the compilers for the new language versions and all the libraries for .NET 3.5. Since they all target the 2.0 CLR and Visual Studio 2008 allows you to target previous versions of the framework I don't see any reason to stick with 2005.
The obvious answer is: No license for Visual Studio 2008.
My company is "saving money" but not upgrading...
One reason might be interaction with existing products.
I write code for AutoCAD in C#.
They (Autodesk) "officially" support VS 2005 but I've been using 2008 since...well 2008.
We are looking at migrating to Visual Studio 2010. Is it possible for some developers to use Visual Studio 2010 and other to use 2008 on the same solution/projects? How will it affect our VSTF builds (VSTF Server 2008)?
You only need to have a separate solution file for each version of Visual Studio for this to work. Project files will work on both VS2008 and VS2010 once converted.
What you need to do is to make a copy of your original VS2008 solution file. I find it easiest to give the copy a name that ends in _VS2008.sln to show that this is for VS2008. Once you have your xxx_VS2008.sln file tucked away next to your original sln-file you can open the original and have it converted to VS2010. When done you can rename the converted file to end with _VS2010 so anyone still working in VS2008 won't open it from their recent projects in Visual Studio and wonder what is going on.
We did this when we went from 2005 to 2008 and we are doing the same now when we are going from 2008 to 2010. Worked fine the first time and so far it has been working for VS2010 for almost a week now without any of our developers reporting problems with it.
once project converted by vs2010 it connot be just opened in vs2008 because vs2010 changes tool version in solution/project files. So you need to maintain two versions of solution/project files.
You will need to have separate solution/project files for 2008 and 2010 as these have different formats - hence the conversion wizard - but you will be able to share other source code files from a common location. Also, bear in mind that you will also have to restrict your target framework to 3.5 or lower to accommodate VS2008.