I'm wanting to perform some maintenance on a C# project created in Visual Studio 2008 Professional. I'm running Visual Studio 2010 Express.
Are there any pitfalls/limitation in opening the solution, converting the solution to VS '10 Express, compiling, and publishing with ClickOnce?
I've converted the solution, and all seems fine. But I want to make sure of a few things:
Will VS warn me if the original solution contains projects that cannot be converted/compiled? I know that VS Express can't create Unit Test / Load Test and some other projects (see this answer). But what happens to these parts of the solution? Am I potentially limiting the solution by loading it up in VS Express? If the solution is reopened in VS Pro later, will those Load Tests, etc load up?
If you received no errors when converting the project you are safe.
Related
Am doing a back end project in C# in Visual Studio. My team mate had done it using Visual Studio 2012 express and everything seems to work there. But when i used git to clone it to my system where am using Visual Studio 2013 express, one part of the project says its incompatible with the current version of VS. I could clean and build the project, but was unable to run the project. I searched and found that one solution is to go to Programs and features, select VS, right click,select repair. But even after doing this, the problem persists. Is there any work around?
When I was learning ASP.NET MVC by Informit tutorials I was in the very similar situation. I downloaded the sample sources that was created in VS2013 but had VS2015 installed. It was some kind of bug \ magic, but VS didn't recognized some libraries in VS2015 even they were installed. What is more strange is the fact that when I decided to totally rewrite the project line by line it worked!
Of course, I tried to clean, rebuild, reinstall NuGet packages.
So, if you have an access to sources *.cs, then just try to create new project and copy-paste code.
In short: I need to open an application originally built in Visual Studio 2008 (version 9) in Visual Studio 2013 without upgrading the project since the overall project architecture must remain the same for when I check it back into source control.
Details: I need to open a Visual Studio solution (.sln) inside Visual Studio 2013. The solution in question was originally developed in Visual Studio 2008, so when I try to open said solution in Visual Studio 2013, I am shown a prompt with the projects within the solution checkmarked, with the message:
These projects are either or supported or need project behavior impacting modifications to open in this version of Visual Studio. Projects no displayed either require no changes or will automatically be modified such that behavior is not impacted. Visual Studio will automatically make functional changes to the following projects in order to open them. You will not be able to open these projects in the version of Visual Studio in which they were originally created.*
My attempt at a fix was to just upgrade the solution and hope for the best. This is successful, but after building and attempting to run the main project, I see the following build error:
The type 'Microsoft.Web.Services3.WebServicesClientProtocol' is defined in an assembly that is not referenced. You must add a reference to assembly 'Microsoft.Web.Services3, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35'. *
I then tried both commenting out the references to this assembly and adding in the missing reference. Okay, so then I rebuilt the solution and attempted to run. Same error, but for a different assembly. Repeat fix, same error for different assembly. This pattern continues and continues, and at this point I realize this is unacceptable anyway, because when I make a change to this solution, I need to check it back into source control. When others open it, they may be opening it in VS2008, and therefore this “upgraded” version is inconsistent with the version the business uses. I need to open the solution originally build in VS2008 in VS 2013 (can't work around this, needs to be VS2013). If it helps, I'm using 64 bit Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate.
Any help or guidance will be greatly appreciated!
As several of the commenters have already helpfully pointed out, this is not possible. Round-tripping (i.e., opening and manipulating project files created by an older version of Visual Studio in a newer version of Visual Studio) was not supported until Visual Studio 11. The only way to open a Visual Studio 2008 project/solution in a later version of Visual Studio will be to convert it.
As far as interoperability with previous versions is concerned, you have two options:
Update the project locally (using the migration wizard provided), make any changes to the project file necessary to get it to build, and then edit the code files. Once you're satisfied with your edits, commit only the modified source files, not the project infrastructure files. Your fellow developers, stuck on VS 2008, won't notice any difference.
Update the project locally (using the migration wizard provided), make any changes to the project file necessary to get it to build, and then rename the project file (e.g., by appending a -vs2013 suffix to it). Commit this to your code repository. You will now have two project files in your root directory, one for each version of Visual Studio that your team works with. From here on, you just open the project file corresponding to the version of VS that you have installed.
I used approach #1 for a good part of last year, where I spent most of my time developing a C++ application in VS 2010 on a desktop machine, but also wanted to work on it on my notebook running VS 2013. Of course, in my case, it took a trivial amount of time for the automatic conversion to upgrade my project file after pulling from source control. I didn't have to do any tweaking thereafter to get the project to build. It sounds like your case is different, so option #2 might be a better choice.
Im writing an applcation with C# in visual studio 2012 but i want to open that project in another place in visualstudio 2008. How i can do this? in saving i have to do something? Or in oening in visualstudio 2008?
Since I am stuck with VS 2008 in my home computer, I regularly have to do this.
You can modify your solution file (*.sln) manually. Most of the time you just have to change the first two lines that define the VS version of the solution.
From this link:
You can edit the sln and csproj/vbproj files by hand and try that way, I've used this method with no side effects. In the sln file the first lines for VS2010 will say
Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 11.00
# Visual Studio 2010
and for a VS2008 solution:
Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 10.00
# Visual Studio 2008
Also, in a 2010 project file you may find a section like
<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" />
which will need to be modified as
<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v9.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" />
With only these 2 types of changes I was able to open the solution & projects with VS 2008.
It's not possible.
Visual Studio generally doesn't support forward compatibility -- that is, opening a newer project in an older version of Visual Studio. It generally supports backward compatibility -- opening an older solution in a newer Visual Studio.
Your only real option here is to retain it as a 2008 solution; even then, when you open it in 2012, it may ask you to convert it to a 2012 solution format, which will make it unusable in 2008.
I have found this while I was Googleing. It may be useful in your case:
Visual Studio Project Converter
Disclaimer: I have not personally tried this program.
I had the same need basically because I wanted to keep the compatibility with .net 3.5.
Although VS2010 and VS2012 support projects running on this FW version, many users are still forced by their companies to use VS2008 or 2010.
I could also develop in 2008 but as a geek that I am I dind't even consider it! :)
So, my solution was to create separate *.sln and *.csproj files for each VS version.
This way you guarantee that everything will work out of the box for each VS version.
The easier and faster way I found to do this was to open eash VS version and create empty solution and projects, with the same structure as the original but with the vs version on the name like:
my.solution.sln
my.project.csproj
...
my.solution.vs2008.sln
my.project.vs2008.csproj
...
my.solution.vs2010.sln
my.project.vs2010.csproj
...
Keep in mind that you have to manually open all the versions and add the new files and so on... they won't be automatically synchronized but it pretty much works.
Hope this helps,
Cheers!
I remember seeing an open source project within the last year that I was able to open in both VS 2008 and VS 2010 without an upgrade wizard popping up. I think...
Is it possible to create a project/solution that will open up in any version of Visual Studio without prompting me to run the upgrade wizard? If so, how do I do this?
Information for both C++ and C# projects would be most helpful.
You can, use CMake and generate VSx solution.
I think the project that you have seen had 2 visual studio solutions for different visual studio versions.
Update:
Also, you can use http://sourceforge.net/projects/vspc/
or see http://www.emmet-gray.com/Articles/ProjectConverter.htm
The solution format hasn't changed significantly over the visual studio versions except the version number.
If the code itself is generic enough (not using linq, etc) then you can edit the first line of the solution file to "downgrade" the version.
VS2005 uses:
Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 9.00
# Visual Studio 2005
You can give the Prebuild project a try to generate needed solution files on the fly.
Prebuild is a cross-platform XML-driven pre-build tool which allows
developers to easily generate project files for major IDE's and .NET
development tools including: Visual Studio .NET 2002, 2003, 2005, 2008, 2010
SharpDevelop, MonoDevelop, NAnt and Autotools.
May be it is not what you ask about, but you can convert you project into nmake target
The only way to do this is to create separate solutions (for 2010 and 2008), and include existing projects to different solutions. Create new projects in VS2008, and then add them to VS2010 solution.
You may need something like round-tripping
Round-tripping is the ability to use a current or previous version of Visual Studio to target a platform that is supported by both versions of VS. For example, with round-tripping, you can open projects from a previous version of VS in a newer IDE without the need for conversion, thus allowing you to work side-by-side on old and upgraded projects.
Read more
Can other version of Microsoft Visual Studio be opened with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 C#?
Projects created with previous versions can, and will invoke a project conversion wizard. Projects created with later versions cannot, generally. I found a downgrade utility on, of all places, Mises.org. I didn't write it, and haven't even tried it, so your mileage may vary.
You can open projects created with older releases of Visual Studio 2005, like 2002. A migration assistent will help you to update the project files.
If you're asking if you can run, say, an instance of Visual Studio 2008 next to 2005, then yes. I've done it many times. When you double-click on a .sln file, what actually runs is a little stub program that examines the .sln and decides which is the best version of Visual Studio to launch it in.
If you're asking whether you can open a solution created in VS 2005 in another version of VS, then the only restriction is that it has to be more recent than VS 2005. EG: you can't open a Visual Studio 2008 solution in VS 2005.
Sometimes you can change the version of the solution file manualy. Open it in text editor and manually change the line "Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 11.00" to earlier. Sometimes can help :).