How to open application done by .net 1.1 frame work by 2010?

Question

Hi, In my company we have same solution but done in different version of .net frame works. Currently my pc is having visual studio 2010 (4.0 frame work). My boss asked me to go through a code done by frame work 1.1 and find some logic (including execution the code). Is there a way to open that application by visual studio 2010 without do any modification?(by 1.1 frame work)However I saw a way to change the target frame work by IDE, but didn’t see frame work 1.1 :(

Answer 1

Maximum operating system version for running .NET 1.1 is Windows XP.

Minimum operating system for Visual Studio 2010 is Windows XP.

Officially you can install additional version of the .NET framework into VS 2010. I don't have XP available (using Windows 7) and so I can't confirm whether it would integration with VS 2010.

If it is just about editing sources you should be able to look at the source files (even if you needed to convert the project/solution files). As long as you don't commit your changes into your version control system nothing can happen.

If you then want to rebuild it with .NET 1.1 tools targeting .NET 1.1 you may need be forced to use the command line and maybe even to create a build script.

So I guess it is worth a try to get an XP box and try it out.

I hope this gives you a few ideas what to try next.

Answer 2

To work with .Net 1.1 - if you want to be able to recompile for that framework, you're going to have to use Visual Studio 2003. 1.1 pre-dates MSBuild (which is the core of the build system for frameworks 2.0 - 4.0, and hopefully later too), which is one of the reasons you can't target it from VS2010.

Visual Studio's 2003 and 2010 can happily coexist on a (XP) machine (as John's answer alluded to - in fact, I have 2003, 2005, 2008 and 2010 all installed on my machine). However, I'd recommend removing 2010 and all evidence of it before installing 2003, then install 2010 afterwards.

As to where you'd get 2003 these days, I'm not sure - hopefully your boss still has the disks around for it.