We have a project which is being developed by a 3rd party. They are using LINQ and .NET 3.5 with Visual Studio 2008. We are currently at 2005 with .NET 2. Once they have delivered the code to us, we are unsure as to whether we will be able to compile/build their code using our current Visual Studio toolkit. I know we can download .NET 3.5, but unsure as to whether we will have problems with Visual Studio.
So we are considering to upgrade. But since Visual Studio 2010 is soon to be released do we wait for that or upgrade to 2008?
Here's a plan:
Upgrade to RC now for non-critical
items. Gain familiarity with it.
Test your 3rd party app in RC to
identify any issues.
Add an addendum to your contract
with the 3rd party that they will
need to deliver the app in .NET 4.0 RTM,
compatible with VS2010 RTM, i.e. get
them to upgrade too!
Upgrade to 2010. We talk of a month here until you get your hands off. AND it being in RC status (so you can actually test now that it compiles etc- no major changes coming). note that I don say go .NET 4.0 NOW - just use VS 2010. No sense in moving to 2008 at this point in time at all.
With the release being so close I would wait for the upgrade and use the release candidate until then.
Seems to be a no brainer. Unless you have immediate operational needs, you can wait for VS2010 and/or better yet, install and use the release candidate (in a non-critical workstation / role) and get acquainted with the new stuff.
Related
I've just been given a new work laptop and have an MSDN subscription. My old laptop had VS 2008, 2010 and 2012. I'd rather not install all of these again if I can avoid it. My main question here is whether there any reason to install VS 2012 if I have access to VS 2013? I believe Projects & Solutions are compatible, what other reasons might there be for installing VS 2012 (and for that matter VS 2010) again? If I have an MVC 3 app created with VS2010, will it be possible to open and work with that in VS2013 without having to "upgrade" the project type?
It really depends on what kind of projects you are working on. Each new releases of VS in fact remove certain features.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/hh266747.aspx
ASP.NET MVC 3 is not supported by VS2013.
Lex' answer is pretty good. I'd also like to add that if you are using C++/CLI, upgrading to Visual Studio 2013 will force you to target .NET 4.5, which might not at all be desirable if your users only have .NET 4.0 etc.
You can still target the older frameworks, by letting VS2013 use the older "Platform Toolset" from e.g. VS2010 or VS2012, but this will force you to have either one of these installed. I am using this exact scenario (VS2010 + VS2013) and it works quite well. (I have only VS2010 and 2013, not 2012 in that specific virtual machine.)
Update: Here is a MSDN page which backs up my statement about C++/CLI, just for the reference.
I have applications that have been created by a third party. These apps were done by using Visual Basic .NET 2003 with MS .NET Framework 1.1. Now I'm in the need to be able to modify these apps, but it seems that at the moment there is only one possible software to purchase and that is the Visual Studio 2010.
Is it even remotely possible to use this newer version with these old creations, or do I have to rewrite the entire code?
If it is possible, I reckon if I make modifications with VS2010, it is impossible to do anything with VB .NET 2003 afterwards?
You can upgrade the projects to VS 2010 and .Net 2.0 or 4.0 and work on them there.
It will not be easy to go back again.
I am going to install Visual Studio. I want to know if the latest version of Visual Studio 2010 is backward compatible with previous versions like VS 2005 and 2008. Or is the code functionality and deploy-ability more dependent on the .NET framework version.
I am trying to use a code which will be built into dll. I am not sure in which version of VS the code was written(most probably VS 2005).
Thanks...
I would suggest to go with the latest Version.
VS 2010 can target multiple frameworks.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb398197.aspx
So the dll should know with which framework it was compiled...
I have never found any issues with Visual Studio 2010 and previous versions' code. It also does feature significantly improved Intellisense and [IMHO] faster building.
they are all backward compatible
2005 and above allow you to target the framework you want when creating
the project
if the project is older
than the VS, it will prompt you with
a migration wizard upon opening
it(this is a one time only step.
Couple of things to note that i've found with 2010 which have caused us a couple of issues:
1) NHibernate (Castle Proxy) doesn't work with .net framework 4 (Currently)
2) Test Projects are always created aimed at .net framework 4, and you cannot target a lower version of the framework.
Otherwise not many problems, its also nice that the database addition of Visual Studio 2010 has intellisense on your tables/views, as well as many other changes
Always go with the latest, now 2010
I downloaded VS 2010 RC and want to try it out.
Can I use it to create commercial software?
When will the final version be released?
The final version of Visual Studio 2010 will probably be released on April 12th, 2010.
However, you can already use the release candidates of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 which both are go live releases (since Beta 2). This means that there will be no breaking changes in the final release versus RC that will make your software unusable, and that they are licensed for developing and deploying production applications.
As with all Visual Studio versions, it is possible to target another earlier .NET framework version, that is you can still develop for .NET 2.0 as an example.
It is also possible to – and in fact a good idea – install Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate side-by-side with other versions of Visual Studio.
All in all I see no risk in trying out Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate. It is obvious that it is not the most stable piece of software at this moment, but certainly usable.
You can still target previous Framework versions so if you want to develop applications there is no reason why it should be any different. The issue would come if you tried to develop .Net 4 solutions as there will not be many people using that yet, especially commercially
Believe the final version will be released end of March. Until then you can't distribute it to customers as the .NET 4.0 installer won't be made available to them.
Is it wise to do so? Well it probably depends on your product. If it's mission critical I'd wait till it's been used for a bit and any bugs are ironed out of .NET 4.0 via service packs. For normal applications I don't really see why not, it's had some pretty rigorous testing internally and by dev's I'm sure.
As long as you're not targeting the 4.0 runtime, you can use it to develop and deploy applications today.
Visual Studio 2010 can target previous versions of the .NET framework, so that's not a problem. However, projects or solutions that were created or modified with Visual Studio 2010 cannot be opened by Visual Studio 2008 without manually editing the project files. So I would definitely not recommend upgrading to VS2010 if you work on a team and your teammates still use VS2008.
I tried vs 2010 beta 2 with a MFC application. The intelisense is improved but the compilers has some problems - sometimes it just freezes and I have to restart VS. Maybe this was fixed in the RC version that was released a few days ago.
Take in consideration that you might have to pay a price (instability) for new technologies.
Work on whatever you want, but I think you should study your customers, as to what OS do they use, are they looking to upgrade, the effects of net 4.0 on your application, etc...
Whenever these things come out, there should always be a phasing plan in place. Although, it's more work, I personally think that it's a great approach
VS2010 is not yet released for commercial use. So if you are using it for commercial use, it is not appropriate. Though it was planned for March 2010 release, you can expect it with some possible delay.
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.