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I’ve been writing a lot of code recently in Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2008. Today was my first attempt to create a setup project to manage deployment of the application we’re writing. We’ve been pretty diligent in abstaining from targeting version 3.5 of the .NET Framework, since it’s not yet an officially released product. Imagine my surprise then, when I try to create a setup project that bootstraps the 3.0 version of the Framework, that I find it missing. I can target .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.5, but strangely, not .NET 3.0.
Fret not, however, for I have found the answer! If you’ve got Visual Studio 2005 installed, this should be easy. Just follow the steps listed here to make sure you have the redistributable packages setup there. After doing that, you’ll want to grab the entire NETFX30 folder from C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\BootStrapper\Packages\ and dump it into the folder at C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\V6.0A\Bootstrapper\Packages\. Now, when you visit the prerequisites section in your setup project’s properties, you should now be able to include the bootstrapper for .NET 3.0. Enjoy!
After installing Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 and opening an existing solution, you’ll be presented with a conversion wizard, much like you would when moving a VS2003 project up to VS2005. I’ve done some experimenting and so far, it seems like loading these newly converted projects back into Studio 2005 causes no problems. In fact, about all that’s changed in the project files is the version number and the addition of a very few XML elements that VS2005 could care less about.
Of course, solution files are completely incompatible. But that’s not such a big deal when you consider that the solution file isn’t a big deal to recreate. What I did was to simply make a copy of the solution file I typically use, and pass that through the project upgrade wizard instead. Voila. Now I have a solution that will work with 2005, and one that will work in 2008.
If you haven’t already tried out Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, I definitely recommend checking it out. Even if you don’t plan on using the new language and framework features like LINQ, there’s plenty of improvements to make it worth investigating. There’s even some VirtualPC images available, which makes trying it out a risk-free endeavor.
I just picked up my conference pass for devLink 2007; a 2-day software development event that’s being held in October at Lipscomb University in Nashville. For $50, it seems like a steal, especially when you consider the list of presenters. I’ve had the opportunity to hear a handful of these speakers at various other events, and I’m looking forward to hearing them and a few others give their talks. You can find the preliminary agenda on the site as well. I plan on hitting up as many of the .NET sessions as I can, but I may be lured away into some of the database and architecture presentations as well. Oh, and they’ve also made available several sessions from the 2006 conference as well. Now I just need to get a hotel booked and I’ll be all set…
Feel free to drop me a comment if you’re from the area and planning to attend. See you there!
