How to upgrade a VC++6.0 project to VS2010?

Question

I have MFC Dialogue based applications written in VC++6.0. Due to my work environment requirements I need to upgrade to Visual Studio 2010. I don't need to add any new feature, just compile with the upgraded visual studio.

Can any guide me on this?

What are all the primary requirements and how to start it?

Answer 1

From the VC++ team blog and Visual Studio 2010 C++ Project Upgrade Guide:

With Visual Studio 2010, C++ build system moved from the VCBuild based system to the MSBuild based build system. The C++ project system is also built on top of the MSBuild build system. There are some limitations, known issues or by design changes that you may run into during the upgrade process. VS2010 supports upgrading from VC6, VS2002, VS2003, VS2005 and VS2008.
As in previous versions of Visual Studio, upgrade can be done either through IDE conversion wizards or from the command line (Devenv.exe /upgrade).

Here are the recommendations for upgrading your applications:

1) Set up the upgrade environment the same as your build environment

The upgrade process will try to load files and evaluate values during upgrade. If your projects use values that are not defined by the project files themselves, for example, values defined by environment variables, it is required that these environment variables are set up before doing the upgrade. Without these environment variables properly set up, you may get conversion warnings or errors caused by unevaluated values.

2) Make sure you have the required platforms installed before doing upgrade

Converting a project on a machine without all the available platforms for the project will result in a conversion error. For example, if you try to convert a project with Itanium Platform on Visual Studio Professional SKU, which does not support the Itanium platform, you will see a conversion error like the following:

Failed to upgrade 'Debug|<Itanium>'. Please make sure you have the corresponding platform installed under
'%vctargetspath%\platforms\Itanium'. Cannot load the project due to a corrupt project file. The following error
has occurred during XML parsing:
File: D:\Sample\ConsoleApp\ConsoleApp.vcproj
Line: 28
Column: 5
Error Message:
System error: -2147154677.
The file 'D:\Sample\ConsoleApp\ConsoleApp.vcproj' has failed to load.

This is by design as the conversion needs to evaluate the properties in the missing platforms to do a successful conversion. You can verify which platforms are installed on your machine by looking in the following directories: %ProgramFiles%\MSBuild\Microsoft.cpp\V4.0\Platforms (or %ProgramFiles(x86)%\MSBuild\Microsoft.cpp\V4.0\Platforms on x64 machine) for the Platforms installed on the machine.

3) Use native Multi-Targeting to build against VS2008 toolset first if possible

In VS 2010, Native multi-targeting have been added which allows you to build against the Visual Studio 2008 toolset from within the VS2010 IDE using the new MSBuild-based project system. I recommend you to take advantage of this feature by using VS2010 to build against VS2008 toolset first when upgrading. This can help isolate any project system/build system related issues from the tools issues that you may run into after upgrade. This will make the move to the VS2010 toolset much smoother. Upon upgrade, the property sheet files (.vsprops) are converted to their new format (.props). Likewise, project files (.vcproj) are converted to their new format (.vcxproj). Note, the new project files are generated alongside the old project files. A new file type (.filter.vcxproj) is also generated during conversion. The filter files contain the information that is used to display folders in the solution explorer. This filter information was originally part of the project file. This change was necessary because MSBuild requests a rebuild whenever the project files changes. By storing filter information in a separate file, the filter can be changed without triggering a rebuild of the entire project.

Note: Upgrade process will not convert the .user file. As a result, your debugging and deployment settings will not be preserved after conversion. In VS2010, a new command line upgrade tool, VCUpgrade.exe is introduced. This command line tool is suitable for upgrading applications with only one project as it cannot take in solution file as input and parse solution information into project files. VCUpgrade.exe is located at: $(VSInstallDir)\common7\Tools directory. This tool will also be shipped in the next release of WinSDK so that the users can do command line upgrade of the project files shipped in WinSDK without Visual Studio IDE.

Answer 2

Just open the project/solution in VS-2010. Convert it and compile.

You might get some compiler warnings/errors depending on your code, because the new compiler is more precise.

But most conversions lead just to a view warnings, like security stuff and others and should work directly.