Visual Studio 2008 and Visual studio 2005

Question

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!

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

• 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