Can Visual Studio 2008 Reference 1.0 Assemblies?

Question

I've got an older assembly (Office XP PIA) that appears to target the .NET 1.0 framework. The assembly has been registered and is visible in the GAC (as well as the Win32 registry), but it doesn't appear in Visual Studio 2008 when I choose "Add Reference".

Does Visual Studio support referencing older assemblies?

Answer 1

Yes, I believe so. You would have to manually browse for the assembly, however.

The following link,Common Pitfalls During PIA Deployment and Installation, may provide the information you are looking for.

Answer 2

This is a quick tutorial for VS2K5 but works with VS2K8 too.

Answer 3

Referencing older assemblies will work. The opposite way however is not supported.

An interesting article on this topic: What happens when a 2.0 app calls a 1.1 assembly

And don't forget to check for any breaking changes between .NET 1.0/1.1 and .NET 2.0