VS2010 and VS2008 project compatibility

Question

Does anyone know if VS2010 will use the same project & solution file format as 2008, or will the 2008 project files need to be upgraded to 2010 format before they\'ll op

Answer 1

Open solution file (.sln) in notepad and change Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 11.00

Visual Studio 2010

to Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 10.00

Visual Studio 2008

Then open the solution file from Visual studio 2008

Answer 2

VS2010 is going to be able to handle 2.0 through 4.0 framework projects, so if you have a project in one of those frameworks, it is unlikely that you would have to worry about any sort of updates or imports or anything of that sort to get up and running with current projects.

Answer 3

Well, there's a problem actually that you'll run into if you try to open a VS2010 project on a computer running only VS2008.

VS2010 makes changes to a MSBuild reference (.target-file) in the project file, and it can not compile in VS2008 if you don't change that reference back to the VS2008 default. But if you have both versions installed on the same machine it will work just fine.

So, you can have half you team install the VS2010 version without ever using it, and they can use VS2008 for whatever reason they want to.

I'm unsure however how language specific feature to release 4.0 of the framework will work with VS2008, my theory is that the IDE won't take it all to well. So if you use C# but target both VS2008 and VS2010, avoid the new language features.

Answer 4

There is a trick.

1. Create a new Solution file.
2. Add all the existing projects, upgrading them in the process.
3. Use the old solution file in VS 2008 and the new one in VS 2010.

I did the same thing with VS 2005/2008 and didn't run into any problems.

Answer 5

"Visual Studio 2010 will allow you to move your projects from previous versions of Visual Studios to VS 2010 with ease, I will call this process as “Converting” the project from VS 200X to VS 2010…

VS 2010 will also allow you to change your project’s Target Framework Version to .NET 4.0 from .NET 2.0, 3.0 or 3.5… I will call this process as “Upgrading”…"

extracted from http://vishaljoshi.blogspot.com/2009/05/vs-2010-project-conversion-upgrade.html

Answer 6

You could just have two different solution files. Usually in open source they make fx. project-2008.sln and project-2005.sln.