Manual steps to upgrade VS.NET solution and target .NET framework?

Question

After you've let the VS.NET (2008 in this case) wizard upgrade your solution, do you perform any manual steps to upgrade specific properties of your solution and projects? For instance, you have to go to each project and target a new version of the framework (from 2.0 to 3.5 in this case). Even after targeting a new version of the framework, I find assembly references still point to the assemblies from the old version (2.0 rather than 3.5 even after changing the target). Does this mean I lose out on the performance benefits of assemblies in the new version of the framework?

Answer 1

All the VS 2008 wizard does is upgrade the project & solution files to be used with VS 2008 - it still targets the framework you started with. If you want to move your projects to a newer version of the framework, you'll have to edit the project settings on each. Too much of a chance of breaking changes for MSFT to do this automatically.

Answer 2

Apart from the target framework feature, you'll need to manually add a reference to System.Core.dll to utilise some of the latest features like Linq.

Answer 3

All versions of the .Net Framework from 2.0 onwards (i.e. 3.0 and 3.5) use exactly the same core framework files (i.e. the CLR, you'll notice there are no directories relating to 3.0 or 3.5 in the C:\Windows\Microsoft.Net\Framework directory) therefore you shouldn't worry too much about any performance issues.

The Core parts are referred to in Microsoft Speak as the 'Red Bits' and the rest as the 'Green Bits'.

Answer 4

@samjudson: So when ScottGu talks about "measuring up to 40% faster application startup improvements for large .NET client applications with SP1 installed," I should get these benefits even if my app references System.Windows.Forms.dll for 2.0.0?