Pinter Computing

When Microsoft releases a new version of Visual Studio developers would  like to use the new features of the new IDE. Usually the new version of Visual Studio converts the solution and project files to a new format to be able to save the new settings of that version of the IDE. More seasoned developers already experienced this conversion madness multiple times migrating their applications from VS 2003 to VS 2005 to VS 2008 to VS 2010 and now to VS 2012. Knowing the past we can predict that this trend will continue in the foreseeable future, so it is better to be prepared and set up our applications for easy conversion from the get go.

This post explains how to convert an application from Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 to 2012.

First prepare your application for the conversion. Read the  “How to set up Microsoft Visual Studio solutions for easy conversion…” post to get all the details step-by-step.

 

Copy the project folder

For every Console Application, Windows Service and Class Library project make a copy of the Project_2010 folder as Project_2012

Remove the read only attribute from the folder and all sub folders and files in it:

• Right click the Project_2012 folder and select “Properties”
• In the Properties window clear the “Read only…” check box and click “OK”

 

Click OK on the next window to remove the read only flag from all files and the sub folders too.

 

Open the “Project_2012” folder and delete the “bin”, “obj”  folders and the “.csproj.vspscc” TFS file.

 

Copy the web project file

For Web Applications and Web Services make a copy of the …_2010.csproj web project file as …_2012.csproj and remove the read only attribute from the _2012 version:

 

Edit the project file in the Project_2012 folder

In Visual Studio 2012 select “Open”, “File…” from the menu,

 

• Click the down arrow on the Open button
• Select “Open With…”

 

• Select “XML (Text) Editor” and click “OK”

 

• In the project file replace “_2010” with “_2012”. In the replace dialog turn off “Match whole word” to find all occurrences of the _2010 reference.

 

Add the new “Project_2012” folder to source control.

 

Copy the solution folder

Make a copy of the Solution_2010 folder as “Solution_2012”.

 

Remove the read only flag from the “Setup_2012” folder and its sub folders as you did it with the Project_2012 folder above.

Delete the “.vssscc” file. Visual Studio 2012 cannot work with setup projects, so also delete the “Setup” folder with the VS 2010 setup project in it.

 

Edit the solution file in Visual Studio

Open the solution file as XML in the “Solution_2012” folder and replace “_2010” with “_2012”  as you did it in the Project_2012 file above.

 

Open the 2012 solution in Visual Studio 2012

Open the solution in Visual Studio 2012, and click OK on the warning dialog about the Setup project. Visual Studio 2012 does not support the Setup project any more. If you want to create MSI files use WIX to generate them.

 

To remove the Setup project from the solution right click the setup project and select “Remove”

Make sure all of your projects use the same .NET framework. See the  “Yellow exclamation point next to a project reference…” post for more information.

 

Add the “Solution_2012” folder to source control.

Make a copy of the Config_2010 folder as Config_2012

• Remove the read only flag from the Config_2012 folder
• Add the Config_2012 folder to source control

Modify the config files

For command line executives and windows services

Modify the App.config files in the Config_2012 folder

If the solution was created in Visual Studio 2008 or an earlier version

• Remove encoding=”utf-8″ from the first line
• Insert
  
<startup><supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.5"/></startup>

  into the <configuration> element

If the solution was created in Visual Studio 2010

• Change the value of the  sku attribute of the <supportedRuntime> element from “.NETFramework,Version=v4.0” to “.NETFramework,Version=v4.5”

For web applications and web services

Modify the Web.config files in the Config_2012 folder

• In the <system.web> node
  • in the <compilation> element set the value of the targetFramework to “4.5”
    ( targetFramework="4.5" )
  • in the <pages> element set the value of the controlRenderingCompatibilityVersion to “4.0”
    ( controlRenderingCompatibilityVersion="4.0" )

  
<compilation defaultLanguage="c#" debug="false" targetFramework="4.5" />

  <pages controlRenderingCompatibilityVersion="4.0" clientIDMode="AutoID"/>


Microsoft releases a new version of  Visual Studio every 2-3 years, but most of the enterprise applications have to be operational for years. Many companies developed applications in earlier versions of Microsoft Visual Studio ( VS 2003, VS 2005, VS 2008, VS 2010, or VS 2012 ) and the developers would like to use the new features of the VS 2013 development environment and the .NET 4.5 or higher Framework, but the conversion looks very hard and time consuming. If the application’s lifespan is long, the projects and solutions could be converted multiple times, so it makes sense to prepare your applications for the easiest  migration as soon as possible. Preferably set up all projects and solutions during the initial development phase, so later the conversion will be easy and straightforward.

You can set up your new applications and modify the structure of existing projects and solutions for easy conversion, so when the time comes it will be easy to convert them to the new version of Microsoft Visual Studio.

For console applications and Windows services we will create the following folder structure.

If you need to add a middle tier project to the application to handle the business rules follow the structure below:

For web applications and web services we will leave the project file in the web application folder, so the folder structure will look like this:

If you need to add a middle tier project to the web application for the business rules:

In the first example we will prepare the My Console App console application for the conversion.

The files of the My Console App solution are distributed the following way:

• The top level “MyConsoleApp” solution level folder contains sub folders for the solution file, and the project files,
  

 

• The “Project_2012″ folder only contains the”Config” and  “Properties” folders, the App.config file and the project file

The “Source” folder will contain all the source files.

Create the folder structure in Windows Explorer and in Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 move all source files to the “Source” folder, so multiple projects can reference them:

• Open the VS 2012 solution in Microsoft Visual Studio 2012
• Right click a source file in the solution explorer and select “Remove”
• In TFS (Team Foundation Server) move the just removed source file from the project folder to the “Source” folder. (If you don’t use TFS or any other source control system use Windows Explorer to move the file.)
• Important: In the Solution Explorer select the project and above the name of the solution click the “Refresh” button, otherwise Visual Studio 2012 will not let you add the file back to the project from the “Source” folder.

 

• Right click the ArchiveCreator project and select “Add”, “Existing Item…”

 

• Select the source file in the “Source” folder, click the down arrow on the “Add” button and select “Add As Link”. This way the file is not going to be copied back to the project folder, it will stay in the “Source” folder.

 

• Repeat the steps above to move all your source files to the “Source” folder and add them to the project as link. A small arrow indicates the the file is added to the project as a link, so multiple projects can reference it.

For Web Applications and Web Services leave the project file in the web application folder, and indicate the Visual Studio version in the file name:

Create a Visual Studio version specific folder for the solution and place the .sln file into it. Indicate the Visual Studio version in the name of the folder.

For console applications and windows services:

For web applications and web services:

When you convert a solution to a new version of the Microsoft Visual Studio IDE you can see yellow exclamation points next to some project references. When you build the solution you also get errors like the following:

Error, The type or namespace name '...' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

Error, Metadata file '....dll' could not be found

The yellow sign tells you that the referenced project is not compatible with this project.

 

Even if you remove the reference and add it again the exclamation mark stays there.

When you convert a solution to a newer version of the IDE in Microsoft Visual Studio make sure all projects target the same framework.

When Visual Studio converts a project it does not change the target framework. If you have multiple projects in your solution check the target framework on the Property pages of all of your projects to make sure those are the same.