Can I open VS 2008 Project in VS 2010 Beta - visual-studio

I was hoping there would an option somewhere that would just let me open my VS 2008 projects and continue working in .Net 3.5 - while using some of the neat new VS UI enhancements.

Yes, Visual Studio 2010 allows you to target previous versions of the CLR/.NET framework at the project level.
When you open the Visual Studio 2008 project file in Visual Studio 2010 it will convert the project file for you. Once this is done, it will be smart enough to target the proper framework and runtime version for you (.NET 3.5 and CLR 2). If it doesn't, you can change this yourself on the property sheet for the project.

Related

How to Migrate Old Visual Studio Project to Visual Studio 2017?

Goal:
I try to open a visual studio project (c#) with CLR code for SQL Server from the Pluralsight course.
Issue:
I get no error messages just warnings below after One-way upgrade on Visual Studio 2017.
Your project is targeting .NET Framework 2.0 or 3.0. If your project
uses assemblies requiring a newer .NET Framework, your project will
fail to build. You can change the .NET Framework version by clicking
Properties on the project menu and then selecting a new version in the
'.NET Framework' dropdown box. (In Visual Basic, this is located on
the Compile tab by clicking the 'Advanced Compiler Options...'
button.)
When I open a solution with single project inside I get message below
The Project Needs to be migrated
or
The Project Needs to be loaded
Tried:
I tried editing csproj files with newer/older version numbers.
I tried different PCs with Visual Studio 2017 and Visual Studio 2015
Idea: Install Visual Studio 2010 as course was released in 2010 BUT I really do not want that.
When I got this issue, I tried reloading the project and when I did, it told me that I did not have an SDK installed and then it offered to install the SDK. Once I had the SDK installed, the project loaded and I was able to work with the project.

How do I build a Visual Studio Extension (VSIX) that targets Visual Studio 2010-2017

Our build environment is VS 2015 (ideally) targeting .net 4.0
We have just re-worked our visual studio plugins based on the Visual Studio extensibility project template in VS 2015. The resulting VSIX works great on VS 2015 & 2017 RC1.
However I would like to target the VSIX at VS 2010 (and ideally 2012). This is where the problems start....
VS 2010 uses .net 4.0.
I drop the compiler to .net 4.0
The VS 2015 (4.5) assemblies wont load (i.e. Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.14.0).
Thats OK as I don't use anything in them, so I drop the references to them in favour of the version 10.0 (2010) ones.
Great the code compiles.
But the VSIX package does not
1>C:\Program Files
(x86)\MSBuild\14.0\bin\Microsoft.Common.CurrentVersion.targets(1820,5):
warning MSB3274: The primary reference
"Microsoft.VisualStudio.Imaging, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a, processorArchitecture=MSIL" could not
be resolved because it was built against the
".NETFramework,Version=v4.5" framework. This is a higher version than
the currently targeted framework ".NETFramework,Version=v4.0".
So the problem seems to be that if I target VS 2010 I need it to build as .net 4.0, but the VS 2015 build script requires .net 4.5.
I'm wondering if its possible to use the VS 2010 build tools in a VS 2015 project? Or must I convert my VS 2015 project back to VS 2010?
UPDATE
Starting to think this is not possible for other reasons...
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/extensibility/faq-2017
The new VSIX v3 format is backward compatible with VSIX v2, so you’ll
still be able to have a single VSIX with a single VSIX ID that
supports Visual Studio 2012 and later. The new VSIX v3 format does not
support Visual 2010 and earlier. To support Visual Studio 2010 onward,
you will need to create a separate extension (with a separate VSIX
ID).
I have ran into similar problem, so I have created a Nuget package called VsixUpdater, which can do the VSIX migration automatically if added to a VSIX project, it even works with older versions of Visual Studio (I tested it with 2012), after adding the package the generated VSIX packages will be V3 and 2017 compatible, see https://github.com/axodox/VsixUpdater for details.
Create a seperate project and VSIX for VS 2010 and another for VS 2012 and later. You can have a look at my source here: https://github.com/ErikEJ/SqlCeToolbox
Notice that I require .NET 4.5.1 for my VS 2010 extension also (simply requires that .NET 4.5.1 is present/installed on the PC, and it is built in to Windows 8.1 and later)
In the end I ended up with 2 projects
A project targeting VS 2010 compiled under .Net 4.0 using a version 2.0 manifest (built using VS 2015).
A project targeting VS 2012 + compiled under .Net 4.5
using a version 3.0 manifest (built using VS 2015).
There has been a certain amount of faffing around with references, but it all seems to work. Our only outstanding issue is the code signing, as VS 2015 will not accept anything below SHA256 and VS 2012 will not accept SHA256....

Can't change the Target Framework

I have a project written in visual studio 2008. I want to upgrade to a newer .NET framework. But everytime I open the project and try to change the target Framework it changes back to .NET 2.0.
Let me know if you need more info.
I open the project in Visual Studio 2013.
Thanks.
The solution was to open the project in Visual Studio 2008. Change the target framework to the newest and after that open the project in Visual Studio 2013 and then change the Target Framework to the newest version.

Visual Studio 2008 and Visual studio 2005

I am developing a Windows Application using the .net Framework 2.0 and Visual C#(Microsoft Visual Studio 2008) in my PC.
On the completion of my project I have to execute it in a system which has Visual Studio 2005 and .net framework 2.0.
So my doubt is if I develop an application in Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 will I be able to execute it in Visual Studio 2005 properly? Is it possible?
Please help me!
Thanks in advance!
The project files are compatible between the two IDEs, but the solution files are not. You may be able to execute it in VS2005 if you create a new solution in 2005 and add the projects to the new solution.
http://blogs.msdn.com/djpark/archive/2007/11/07/how-to-use-solutions-and-projects-between-visual-studio-2005-and-2008.aspx
Create the project in Visual Studio 2005
Save a copy of it somewhere
Upgrade to Visual Studio 2008, do your development work.
Drop your finished project back into your original Visual Studio 2005 project and compile
There should be minimal differences in the code so long as you don't use any .NET 3.5 features.
Note: So long as you use .NET 2.0 features only, the project will run just fine on the Visual Studio 2005 machine
It depends on what you mean by 'execute'. You can run your application just fine on your target machine, that has nothing to do with Visual Studio. As long as the framework version is the same (or higher) you should have no problems.
However, if you want to open your solution in Visual Studio 2005 while it was built using 2008, you will run into problems, as they are not backwards compatible.
Replace Version 10.0 in *.sln files with Version 9.00
Replace 2008 with 2005 in *.sln
Replace Version="9.00" with Version="8.00" in each *.vcproj file

Is there a way to change .NET framework version of Visual Studio 2005 to 3.5?

Is there a way to change .NET framework version of Visual Studio 2005 to 3.5?
No. Visual Studio 2005 only supports .NET 2.0 out-of-the-box. It can be updated to support .NET 3.0.
It is possible to compile .NET 3.5 code with a Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition, or without Visual Studio 2008 using Mono and I think the Windows/.NET SDK. However these will obviously not be integrated into Visual Studio 2005.
Visual Studio 2005 only supports .NET 2.0. The format of the solution file (.sln) changed in Visual Studio 2008 to allow you to select the target .NET version.
VS2008/2010 have a visual way of setting the project setting "TargetFrameworkVersion" which makes it easier, however I have found that adding the same tag to a VS2005 project will change the target framework. You might try adding 1(one) of the following into the section of your VS C# project.
<TargetFrameworkVersion>v3.0</TargetFrameworkVersion>
<TargetFrameworkVersion>v3.5</TargetFrameworkVersion>
<TargetFrameworkVersion>v4.0</TargetFrameworkVersion>

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