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.
Related
We have several VS2013 solutions all targeting .NET 3.5, with several WinForms projects, an ASP.NET Web Application, and a Windows Service. Mostly VB.NET with some C#.
These projects all worked fine in VS2013 and VS2015 - we could open, work on, save, compile and run them, in both versions of VS.
We didn't move to VS2015 in the end because it was so buggy - VB.NET Edit & Continue was hopelessly broken, and Intellisense didn't work so well either.
So now we're contemplating skipping 2015 and moving straight from 2013 to 2017, but again we're nervous, wanting to run them in parallel for a while until we feel 2017 is ok. It's a two person team, and one would be sticking with VS2013 while the other one develops with VS2017.
So: can you use both VS2013 and VS2017 to work on the same codebase in the same way that you could with VS2013 and VS2015?
We aren't yet using features that come with later versions but we do want to move to the newer IDE as a precursor to moving to more recent framework versions and language features.
The compatibility between different versions of VS should remain the same - that is, VS2017 and VS2013 should work together as well as VS2015 does with VS2013. The usual caveats apply: any globally installed packages/frameworks from VS2017 might have unintended impact on VS2013 (for example, if VS2017 installs a newer version of the .NET Framework that has an unintentional behavior change).
In general, VS2017 ought to be very compatible with other versions of VS. Most of the install payload is now local to that VS installation with lessened impact to the system (no GAC'ed components, no registry keys, etc), so the impact to your box should be less than VS2015.
Obviously, if you add functionality to your solution that's from VS2017 and isn't back-compatible to VS2013, an upgrade will be forced. But that's also no different than VS2015 was.
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.
If I am the only person on my team that uses vs2012, can I assume that as long as I target version 4 of the framework that other colleagues that are using 2010 will have no issues?
Yes, it should work fine. Just make sure that your colleagues have SP1 (VS2010) installed.
Yes!
I'm building sharepoint apps, and constantly switching from vs 2010 and VS 2012 with no issue, even on the same computer.
Microsoft had the good idea to maintain the project and solution compatible in the two ways.
You should be careful thought, that the projects kind are compatible.
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
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.