I have a copy of visual studio 2005 currently installed and want to install visual C# express 2008 to experiment with XNA. I'd like to know if this is possible and if there may be any issues with doing so.
+1
A:
Yes, I've had 2003, 2005 and 2008 all residing on the same machine quite happily. The only caveat would be if you are trying to use the same projects with two different versions.
the_mandrill
2010-09-08 22:38:49
+2
A:
Yes, no problem. They can be installed side-by-side (and Visual Studio 2010 as well). I even have the Express Edition and the full (professional or premium) edition of VS 2010 installed on one machine.
Just be careful, with converting projects (e.g. from VS 2005 to 2008). Once you have done that, you can no longer open the projects/solution with the older versions of VS.
M4N
2010-09-08 22:38:49
Thanks for reminding me about the whole project conversion thing.
Matt Wamboldt
2010-09-09 00:06:10
One thing that we do when we're investigating a move to the next version of Visual Studio is we have a script that finds all *.sln and *.vcproj files and renames as _vs2008.sln/.vcproj. It then also reads in the .sln files and changes the project names to include the _vs2008 suffix. This means that you can try out 2008 whilst leaving your original project files intact.
the_mandrill
2010-09-09 08:14:55
+2
A:
Yes. Our best practice here is to install the older VS versions first.
Vermiscious
2010-09-08 22:44:50