Version compatibility

[meuqsaco]

I'm working on a college project and we need to do it on visual studio 2005 2008 version 8, but I started doing on vs 2008 version 9 without noticing it. I have done a lot and I was wondering if a 2008 version 9 project will work on version 8.

Thanks and sorry for any english mistake.

 

[jmcilhinney]

I have done a lot and I was wondering if a 2008 version 9 project will work on version 8.

Yes and no. VS 2005 will outright refuse to open a project created in VS 2008. That said, the only real impediment is the fact that in the SLN and VBPROJ files it says that it's from VS 2008 so VS 2005 just says "no". It's possible to edit those files, which are just plain text, to make it look like a VS 2005 project, which will then open successfully. I don't know exactly what needs changing but you could work it out just by carefully comparing the two versions.

There is a free utility available on the web to automate this conversion. I don't have a link to it but I'd think you could find it with a Google search.

Before performing this conversion you should make sure that your project is targeting version 2.0 of the Framework and that it will compile. Once you've performed the conversion and opened the project in VS 2005 you may have to fix a few small syntax errors if you've used VB 2008-only features.

Having said all that, if your project is not very complex then it might be just as easy to create a new VS 2005 project and use Add Existing Item to import the classes from the other project. You can't import things like resources and settings but if you have few, or none, of those then that's not a big deal.