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to hack or not to hack...

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Well I got some answers to using .Net Framework 2.0 on VS2003.  Aside from the great suggestions posted on my blog the other day, most people seem to have the opinion that VS2003 is not going to be forward compatible without a great deal of hacking.

So that leaves the question, to hack or not to hack.  The rest of my team seems to be ok with upgrading to VS2005 and I guess I don't have any problem with it except for one question that comes up whenver I think about it...is it wise to develop a library for use by a pretty large group with a beta development tool?  I mean it's my teams responsibility to make sure this library is stable...I guess there shouldn't be any problem with upgrading...I mean any problems that "could" happen we'll catch long before it's released to the rest of the group.  At least I don't think there's anything that could happen aside from general coding errors that could trickle down to the general users of our library...not that I can think of anyway. 

So here's to keeping the fingers crossed and hoping nothing bad happens.  ;)

Comments

  • Anonymous
    July 18, 2005
    I would love to see an installer that hacked Visual Studio to make this happen. If I had more time I would try.
  • Anonymous
    July 18, 2005
    Toffer, you can build VS2003 project by .NET Framework 2.0. And it can be done with well-supported tools.

    You know, .NET 2.0 introduce MSBUILD tool, new managed build system. It is implemented in managed code in system libraries.

    And there is "Upgrade" feature in MSBUILD libraries. This feature converts old .csproj file to new structure.

    So, you can craft your own utility, that will get existing VS2003 project, upgrade it and then build it by MSBUILD and .NET Framework 2.0. Of course, it should be done in temporary directory.

    If you put this to Post-Build step, you will get .NET 2.0 compilation if and only if .NET 1.1 compilation was done successfully. Nice way to get it multiplatform targeted.

    However, using VS 2003 as IDE for .NET 2.0 development adds nearly no value. It may be much better to turn it over: use VS 2005 as IDE for both .NET 1.1 and .NET 2.0 targets.

    MSBUILD can be configured to build for .NET 1.1. And this is not hard. There is Microsoft blogger, that made it even easy possible. Try to Google "MSBuild Toolkit".
  • Anonymous
    July 18, 2005
    Maybe your team shouldn't be developing a product using beta versions of the .net framework =] I'm aware of the goodies 2.0 has to offer but I will patiently wait for the november release date before targeting .net 2.0.
  • Anonymous
    July 18, 2005
    I think I should add more on targeting MSBUILD for .NET 1.1.

    Now I have at least 2 solutions, that have single codebase for .NET 1.1 and .NET 2.0.

    Even better: the solution build process configured to build both targets by Ctrl+Shift+B. Of course, my code have some places where #if/#endif claims used. With simulateoneus build I my code always is guaranteed compilable for any target.

    And more. It is amazing, but VS 2005 can debug .NET 1.1 processes!

    It is funny, you can start .NET 1.1 application, attach debugger to it at runtime and then write to "Watch" window:
    Envi
    Then you can press Ctrl+Space, select "Environment" (in Watch window!), dot and select "Version". You can see it is really .NET 1.1.

    The work VS2005 developers done is really fantastic!!
  • Anonymous
    July 18, 2005
    Hasani, VS 2005 can be used for .NET 1.1 development smoothly. You may get all Whidbey editor/refactoring/codegen features and still compile to .NET 1.1.

    And it will use C# compiler from .NET Framework 1.1, so you have no unsafe beta software between plain text c# code and binaries.
  • Anonymous
    July 18, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    October 23, 2011
    The comment has been removed