Microsoft: Newer Versions of Visual Studio Can Load Older Projects -- Visual Studio Magazine

Microsoft: Newer Versions of Visual Studio Can Load Older Projects

The company calls this ability "round-tripping," and says that Visual Studio 2013 will be able to load projects as far back as Visual Studio 2010.

By Keith Ward
06/12/2013

Now that Microsoft has moved to completely Agile methodologies with its flagship development product, Visual Studio, it has to deal with a new sort of problem: backward compatibility, and the ability to load projects from older versions onto newer iterations of the IDE.

That issue has become even more acute since the announcement of Visual Studio 2013 at the recent TechEd conference. Microsoft's answer is "round-tripping," and it's been enhanced in Visual Studio 2013, according to Microsoft Technical Fellow Brian Harry. "That was a huge customer ask and I've heard a lot of feedback since then that customers rely on it," Harry wrote on his blog. Specifically, Harry said that Visual Studio 2013 will support round-tripping with Visual Studio 2012, and Visual Studio 2010 as well.

Not all projects are eligible, he said. "There will likely be some exceptions of project types that require one-way migration or some such but the majority of project types will round-trip seamlessly." He added that round-tripping will be available in the preview version of Visual Studio 2013, which will be released at this month's Build conference.

The importance of round-tripping to some developers was pointed out in comments following the blog, as someone identifying as "Phil Barila" stated: "If it wasn't for the round-trip in Visual Studio 2012, I wouldn't be using it. If it won't round-trip with 2010, I won't be using Visual Studio 2013."

Also in the comments, Harry mentioned that Visual Studio 2013 can be installed on a development machine side-by-side with Visual Studio 2012.

The most recent version of Visual Studio is Visual Studio 2012.3, which is at Release Candidate (RC2) stage. Updates to Visual Studio have been coming out on a monthly basis in 2013.

About the Author

Keith Ward is the editor in chief of Virtualization & Cloud Review. Follow him on Twitter @VirtReviewKeith.

Printable Format

comments powered by Disqus

Featured

New 'Visual Studio Hub' 1-Stop-Shop for GitHub Copilot Resources, More

Unsurprisingly, GitHub Copilot resources are front-and-center in Microsoft's new Visual Studio Hub, a one-stop-shop for all things concerning your favorite IDE.
Mastering Blazor Authentication and Authorization

At the Visual Studio Live! @ Microsoft HQ developer conference set for August, Rockford Lhotka will explain the ins and outs of authentication across Blazor Server, WebAssembly, and .NET MAUI Hybrid apps, and show how to use identity and claims to customize application behavior through fine-grained authorization.
Linear Support Vector Regression from Scratch Using C# with Evolutionary Training

Dr. James McCaffrey from Microsoft Research presents a complete end-to-end demonstration of the linear support vector regression (linear SVR) technique, where the goal is to predict a single numeric value. A linear SVR model uses an unusual error/loss function and cannot be trained using standard simple techniques, and so evolutionary optimization training is used.
Low-Code Report Says AI Will Enhance, Not Replace DIY Dev Tools

Along with replacing software developers and possibly killing humanity, advanced AI is seen by many as a death knell for the do-it-yourself, low-code/no-code tooling industry, but a new report belies that notion.
Vibe Coding with Latest Visual Studio Preview

Microsoft's latest Visual Studio preview facilitates "vibe coding," where developers mainly use GitHub Copilot AI to do all the programming in accordance with spoken or typed instructions.