CODEWITHSUNDEEP
visual-studiovisual-studio-2012visual-studio-2013
Mark
Mark

Reputation: 1687

Are there any functional differences between a VS2012 and VS2013 Solution?

The title of this question probably seems a bit convoluted so let me explain it in more detail.

I work for a company that has recently requested that all their pre-VS2013 Projects and Solutions be upgraded to VS2013. During my initial upgrade tests I noted that some of the solutions prompted for an Upgrade to be functionally sound under VS2013.

These Solutions/Projects typically launched the Migration Wizard and presented the message that non-functional changes to the Project were required to run under VS2013 and as long as there were no errors present afterward, the Projects compiled and ran without any issue.

While there were other VS2012 Solutions/Projects that displayed no dialogs whatsoever and simply ran under VS2013 without issue.

My initial presumption was since the latter mentioned Projects weren't identified by VS2013 as having any components that required alteration for the upgrade; that they were simply upgraded behind the scenes, compiled without error and simply ran.

But after a short conversation with the Company Supervisor and a peek at the Solution files, it appears that those Solutions are still configured for VS2012 and not VS2013.

Below are a few lines of code from each Solution File:

VS2013 Solution File
Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 12.00
# Visual Studio 2013
VisualStudioVersion = 12.0.30110.0

VS2012 Solution File
Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 12.00
# Visual Studio 2012

As you can see the VS2012 Solution File indicates # Visual Studio 2012 while the VS2013 Solution File shows # Visual Studio 2013 with an additional line appended to the file stating VisualStudioVersion = 12.0.30110.0

So the real question/concerns here regarding this migration effort are:

  1. Is there any way to FORCE a VS2012 project to VS2013 as opposed to simply opening the project/solution under VS2013

  2. Are there any potential caveats that should be taken into consideration when at some point VS2012 becomes outdated/deprecated by Microsoft? E.g. If tomorrow VS2012 were to become obsolete would there be potential areas of concern for these types of Projects running in a Production Environment?

The targeted goal is to have all our Projects and Solutions migrated to and running under VS2013 for continuity of the environment and simply do away with any Pre-VS2013 items.

Thanks

Upvotes: 3

Views: 4308

Answers (1)

Hans Passant
Hans Passant

Reputation: 942348

The ability to open projects created in earlier VS versions without converting them was first added to VS2012. By popular demand, moving to a new VS version could be pretty painful if not all members of a team migrated at the same time.

There is no point about fretting about this, VS2013 just doesn't have any trouble opening and saving projects like this. Nor does it have a way to force the conversion. In the olden days it could be done by running devenv.exe with the /upgrade option. Not sure if that still works, you'd have to try. I've seen SO users recommending editing the project file, I do not think that's a good idea.

It will automatically prompt you for an upgrade when you add any feature that wasn't supported in a previous release. Hard to come up with examples of that for VS2013, beyond Windows Phone 8.0 projects, VS2013 is a relatively minor increment from VS2012.

Upvotes: 4

Related Questions