Can several suites of the same version of Visual Studio be installed Side by Side ?

Question

Hi,

I would like to know if I can install say Visual Studio 2008 Pro and Visual Studio 2008 standard on the same machine. I have tried to install the pro (trial edition available on MSDN) after the express, and it seems to require them to be installed in the same directory. Is this specific to the express edition ?

The reason why I am asking this is to support automatic detection of VS compilers on a given machine for a build tool (scons), and I am not so familiar with non express versions of VS. IOW, I don't want to run them side by side, I only need to know if I should handle side by side installation in my detection scheme.

Answer 1

I wouldn't recommend installing multiple editions of the same version side-by-side. I can imagine it playing havoc with the registry. If you just need to have all the different editions available for testing, I'd use VMs.

You can, however, install multiple editions (e.g. 2003, 2005 and 2008) side-by-side.

Answer 2

I know I have installed the express version and the professional version on the same machine.

You could also use Microsoft Virtual PC and install other versions on virtual machines.

Answer 3

You can install Visual Studio and each of the Express Editions side by side, but not a bunch of Visual Studios.

If you need to have them close, I would agree with the Virtual Machine idea.