So, I was arguing with a great friend of mine about Visual Studio 2012 and Microsoft being able to detect which one you used. According to him if you get your hands on a direct MSDN download of Visual Studio 2012 Professional, and you end up creating an app, like a game or something, and then you submit it to the Windows App Store, they will never know which visual studio version you truly used to develop the App, or if you were the owner of it or not.
Is he right? Because I thought Visual Studio some how left a footprint behind on the .exe file letting Microsoft know about licensing information. Or should I go apologize to him for calling him a f...ing liar.
If you guys say it does leave a print, can you show some proof, or a link to read more about it? Thanks guys.
Your friend is likely correct. Why would MS bother when they make freely available all the tools you need to compile your program. You can build .Net applications without the Visual Studio IDE. See this related question
Is it possible to install a C# compiler without Visual Studio?
I used to have R# 6 with VS2010 and it was great.
Now I installed yesterday R# 7.1 trial and my VS 2012 became slow to the point I really
want to uninstall R# despite all the heartache involved with it.
Any advices on how to troubleshoot this performance issue?
Please be more specific: what kind of projects do you work with, did you notice which particular actions are slow (for example, opening a solution, invoking code completion (IntelliSense) in JavaScript or something like this). Without details I can only give you these general advises:
Close Visual Studio, try to delete your solution caches (they are usually located near your *.sln file, in folder named like _ReSharper.), open Visual Studio again.
Try to temporaty disable/uninstall all other Visual Studio extensions/plugins.
Try ReSharper 8.0 EAP, maybe your issue is fixed there.
ReSharper has a feature that allows you to profile it (menu ReSharper | Help | Profile Visual Studio). If you know a reproducible slow action, you can invoke this feature, make this action and then send this performance snapshot to JetBrains support (http://www.jetbrains.com/support/resharper/) or open a bugreport at http://youtrack.jetbrains.net/. They could tell you which part of ReSharper is slow and how to disable that part.
I opened my vs2010 solution with vs2012 but it didn't make any conversion as from 2008 to 2010 was happening. So my solution still remains the same as 10 label on it. when I make a new solution of course it has 11 label on it. I haven't got any problem running like that but I am curious. Is there any difference? if yes, how to convert into vs2012 solution?
I managed to 'convert' the solution file to change the line containing '# Visual Studio 2010' to '# Visual Studio 2012' in the .SLN file.
Manual editing of the solution file is not necessary, or recommended. Simply open the VS2010 solution in VS2012, left-click the solution (at the very top of the Solution Explorer), then use File | Save As to overwrite the original file. This will effectively convert the VS2010 solution file to a VS2012 solution file.
There are some exceptions, but mostly you'll be able to open the same project and solution files files in both VS2012 and VS2010 SP1.
VS2012 may convert projects when you first open them, but the changes are (except noted in the document linked) backward compatible with VS2010 (ie using conditionals where needed to only apply to either version when loaded) Most project types will be left entirely untouched though.
It is about Visual Studio 2012 Compatibility
If you created your assets in Visual Studio 2010 with Service Pack 1 (SP1), many of them will load and run in Visual Studio 2012 without any further action on your part.
Many assets will also open again in Visual Studio 2010 with SP1 without any issues, even after you open those assets in Visual Studio 2012
For C++ projects it makes a difference, as the 2012 compiler (VC11) will only be used on projects that are explicitly 2012, not on 2010 projects opened in VS 2012. Some C++11 improvements are available with the VC11 compiler but not with VC10 (see this SO Answer for a summary), including:
Range based for-loops
New standard library headers (atomic, mutex, thread,...)
Smaller standard library container sizes
(And more to follow when the Nov 2012 CTP is delivered to VS 2012)
In order to convert from VS 2010 project to VS2012 there is no need to manually edit the solution file or 'Save As' over the existing project. Instead:
If you decline the update when first prompted, you can update the project later by opening the Project menu and choosing Update VC++ projects... [at the top of the menu options]
From MSDN's "How to: Upgrade Visual C++ Projects to Visual Studio 2012"
(This page was linked from #Joachim's MSDN link, but I wanted to have the answer here on SO since a number of other answers suggested manual workarounds instead of this VS 2012 feature)
In my case, I had some Visual Source Safe stuff (my project was created with Visual Studio 2003/2005, yes, very old!)
Once I manually removed the VSS stuff, the conversion succeeded.
PS: I know it's about VS2010, but maybe this helps others.
You can convert a project from VS2010 to VS2012 by doing the following:
Add the 2010 project to your VS2012 solution by right-click on your solution in the Solution Explorer and Select Add --> Existing Project...
The project will appear in the solution and will have (Visual Studio 2010) appended to its name.
Right-click on the added project and select Properties.
In the Configuration Properties --> General pane, change the setting in Platform Toolset field to Visual Studio 2012 (v110)
Repeat for each configuration type, e.g. Release and Debug.
I came across this question while googling for a solution to a specific problem: MSBuild was failing to execute the Publish target against a VS2012 solution that had started life in VS2010 when called from the command line (specifically through TeamCity):
error MSB4019: The imported project "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\Windows Azure Tools\2.3\Microsoft.WindowsAzure.targets" was not found. Confirm that the path in the <Import> declaration is correct, and that the file exists on disk.
MSBuild was looking for the Azure SDK 2.3 targets in the VS10 location (C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\Windows Azure Tools\2.3\Microsoft.WindowsAzure.targets). The cause is explained by Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi in a blog post and, as I understood it, boils down to some decisions they made while enabling cross-version compatibility for solution files. The solution was simple: add the VisualStudioVersion property to the MSBuild invocation, something like this:
msbuild.exe MyAwesomeWeb.sln /p:VisualStudioVersion=11.0
Practically speaking, this overrides the following in each csproj file:
<VisualStudioVersion Condition="'$(VisualStudioVersion)' == ''">10.0</VisualStudioVersion>
Presumably you could get the same result by editing all of these by hand to replace 10.0 with 11.0 but that might break backwards-compatibility -- I haven't tried it. I also haven't tried an update to VS2013 to see if the problem persists.
So to wrap this up by answering the question: yes, there are some differences before you "convert" (using any of the methods offered by other answerers) and some differences remain afterwards.
This is slightly different, but along the same lines so in case it helps anyone:
I was loading a project where it looked like it was loading and then kept showing all projects as unavailable. No errors were on the migration report. I tried reloading the solution and projects many times, using various methods including suggestions here.
Finally I found a "Resolve Errors" option when right clicking on the solution in the Solution Explorer. VS went through a load process again and it worked; no problems.
I don't know what it did differently that time, but apparently it made a difference.
it's to simple just edit the .sol file
change the version to 11
like this
Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 12.00
Visual Studio 2012
is there any way at all to open projects in Visual Studio 11 Beta without breaking their compatibility with Visual Studio 2010?
Maybe someone already wrote a tool that converts project files back to 2010 version?
I desperately wanna work in VS11, but all others in our team work in 2010,
Is there any tool that can convert project files back to VS2010?
If your team is using VS2010 SP1 then you are probably OK already. Visual Studio supports round tripping of solutions and projects between versions now so that you can open a project in VS11, make changes, and then open it in VS2010 without breaking anything.
More information can be found here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2012/03/28/round-tripping-with-visual-studio-11.aspx and the compatibility list is here.
Maybe this work: http://vsprojectconverter.codeplex.com ?
Recently I came across a recommendation for a Visual Studio plugin called Refactor! For Visual C++ that looks like it would be very useful in helping me tame a particularly pastalike legacy application that I've inherited. Unfortunately, the download links appear to be broken and I can't find a mirror anywhere online.
I've also tried to contact DevExpress, but they suggested that Refactor has been effectively discontinued by being rolled into CodeRush Express and that I use that. Since CodeRush does not support C++, and even further doesn't work with Visual Studio 2005, I am unable to use it.
Does anyone know of (or can provide) a mirror for the Refactor! for VC++ installer? I'm sure I'm not the only one who's stuck in VS2005 that would benefit from this tool.
DevExpress responded to an issue in their tracker with a link to just the Refactor component. Unfortunately, I couldn't get it to work for me.
For posterity, here's the link they sent, and the issue ticket:
http://downloads.devexpress.com/DXperience/2011.2/7/RefactorCPP-11.2.7.exe
http://www.devexpress.com/issue=B208783
Edit: Before someone else says it, Visual Assist X does support Visual Studio 2005. I was interested in Refactor mostly for the fact that it is was a free product that I could use at work without having to go through purchasing and licensing issues.
Have you tried this plugin, which claims to support VS2005 and C++:
DevExpress Refactor! Pro for Visual Studio (Trial)