Help Visual Studio .NET 2003 to 2005

[TranSoft]

Hi does anyone know how this can be done? I got a windows app in 2003 and would like to know the best solution to convert it to 2005.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Application or project?

Application is an EXe/DLL - no need to modfiy such due to a different IDE.

If a project, 2005 may jsut import; otherwise create a new project and setup th eoptions and include the needed files.

 

[lozina]

When I loaded my 2003 projects in 2005 it just prompted me that the version was different, would you like ot upgrade it? and I allowed it to go through a quick little automated process. was painless and seems to work fine.

 

[TranSoft]

It's a project. I will have to update the app and create a new .exe when new changes are requested. Another issue is that I do not have a version of 2003 on my computer. When I try to open up the solution file, it wants to convert but of course I can't get it to compile or even see anything on the designer view.

 

[UCJefe]

I went through this process on a fairly large-scale enterprise application (Winforms, strongly typed datasets, web services, etc). The migration wizard did not take care of everything but the remaining changes were minimal. We had some class name collisions with new classes in the .NET 2.0 framework and we had to rebuild our datasets and web service references along with some file path references (which changed because of the new-style web folder). But everything was actually surprisingly smooth. .NET 2.0 actually exposed some bugs in our applcation (cross threading/calling into UI controls from a worker thread) but overall it was very painless.

The best advice to you is to just try it and see what happens. What kind of scale are we talking about here? In our case it was ~20 projects worth and like I said, we only had a handful of issues.

 

[TranSoft]

I only got 1 project. It does have one web service and a bunch of datasets. There are also some 3rd party controls.

 

[UCJefe]

Originally posted by: TranSoft
I only got 1 project. It does have one web service and a bunch of datasets. There are also some 3rd party controls.

Rebuild your web service and make sure to update your web references again! You may also want to resave your datasets (by unchecking the "Save as DataSet" box and then re-checking it. If you're still having problems, you just need to go through your compile errors 1 by 1 and not get too scared if you have lots of them. Chances are, 1 or 2 changes will make them all go away. If you still need help, post your compile errors.

 

[TranSoft]

Yeah this is my first time trying to convert anything like this so it's a bit intimidating. I am not even familiar with the application (new to job). Thanks for you help and I'll try and see what I can do.

Is there a reason why I can't get to the designer view as well? Does it need to compile before i can see anything?

 

[snapper316]

aaaaaaaaaaaand why/how did you get this job in the first place?

 

[TranSoft]

Originally posted by: snapper316
aaaaaaaaaaaand why/how did you get this job in the first place?

my old job was pathetic. I wasn't learning anything and so i needed something new and challenging. So here I am...

 

[UCJefe]

Originally posted by: TranSoft
Yeah this is my first time trying to convert anything like this so it's a bit intimidating. I am not even familiar with the application (new to job). Thanks for you help and I'll try and see what I can do.

Is there a reason why I can't get to the designer view as well? Does it need to compile before i can see anything?

Most likely. If you are using User Controls, those have to compile before being able to be seen in the designer. When you say things don't work in the designer, what exactly do you mean? Does the form come up and it's empty? Do you get those little red X's in the task list? Do you get the page that says "this component can't be designed for some reason or another"?

By the way, did the project conversion wizard give you any errors? Were all your files writable before running the project conversion wizard? (I had some strange issues because I copied over a bunch of files from a source controlled directory once).

More details are always good

 

[Schnieds]

Couple of very important things that you need to take into account:

Visual Studio 2003 works wth the .NET Framework v1.1
Visual Studio 2005 works with the .NET Framework v2.0

This means that if you do perform the upgrade and get it compiling correctly, you will be tied to the 2.0 Framework. This is generally a good thing as it offers a lot of great new features and improvements over the 1.1 Framework, however you need to be careful of a couple of things:

1) You will have to make sure that the 2.0 Framework is installed on all of your client computers as this is a Windows Forms App.

2) You will need to make sure that all of the 3rd Party libraries you are using support the 2.0 Framework.

Other than that, the upgrade process should be relatively easy.