CODEWITHSUNDEEP
visual-studiovisual-studio-2012visual-studio-2013
j.strugnell
j.strugnell

Reputation: 407

New Laptop - Any reason to install Visual Studio 2012 AND 2013?

I've just been given a new work laptop and have an MSDN subscription. My old laptop had VS 2008, 2010 and 2012. I'd rather not install all of these again if I can avoid it. My main question here is whether there any reason to install VS 2012 if I have access to VS 2013? I believe Projects & Solutions are compatible, what other reasons might there be for installing VS 2012 (and for that matter VS 2010) again? If I have an MVC 3 app created with VS2010, will it be possible to open and work with that in VS2013 without having to "upgrade" the project type?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1012

Answers (2)

Per Lundberg
Per Lundberg

Reputation: 4221

Lex' answer is pretty good. I'd also like to add that if you are using C++/CLI, upgrading to Visual Studio 2013 will force you to target .NET 4.5, which might not at all be desirable if your users only have .NET 4.0 etc.

You can still target the older frameworks, by letting VS2013 use the older "Platform Toolset" from e.g. VS2010 or VS2012, but this will force you to have either one of these installed. I am using this exact scenario (VS2010 + VS2013) and it works quite well. (I have only VS2010 and 2013, not 2012 in that specific virtual machine.)

Update: Here is a MSDN page which backs up my statement about C++/CLI, just for the reference.

Upvotes: 2

Lex Li
Lex Li

Reputation: 63143

It really depends on what kind of projects you are working on. Each new releases of VS in fact remove certain features.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/hh266747.aspx

ASP.NET MVC 3 is not supported by VS2013.

Upvotes: 3

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