Can a VS2010 VSPackage project be installed to VS2008?

Question

I am wondering whether the result VSIX artifact of a VSPackage project created and written in Visual Studio 2010 can be deployed to Visual Studio 2008 - provided, of course, that the package does not use/rely on any .NET 4 assemblies?

Alternatively, what other paths may exist, that allow me to create an installable extension targetting both VS2008 and VS2010 from a VS2010 solution?

Thanks.

Answer 1

VSIX is a new feature for VS 2010, so you can't deploy your package to 2008 with a VSIX. You could, however, build a package that targets both 2008 and 2010 and deploy it with a MSI. (MSI deployment of packages in 2010 is still supported.)

I wrote a blog post explaining how you could set up a project in 2010 that would target 2008 and 2010: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/aaronmar/archive/2009/12/07/targeting-vs-2008-with-the-visual-studio-2010-sdk.aspx