Converting from VS2003 to VS2005

[Thore Berntsen]

I have some questions about converting a project from VS2003 to VS2005.

I just did a test. I had a VS2003 project that I loaded into VS2005. I
followed the instructions in the conversion wizard. It found no problems, so
I compiled the project without any problems. My question is : I know that
VS2005 supports .NET CF 1.0 projects, is the assemblies in my converted
project in version 1.0 or 2.0?

I they are version 1.0, how can I convert the project to 2.0?

Another question: Can I use 1.0 assemblies in a 2.0 project? If yes, does
that mean that the "mixed" project will load both version 1.0 and 2.0 of the
..NET Compact Framework? If yes is the answer to the last question, will that
influence the performance of the device.

Thore Berntsen

 

[Alex Feinman [MVP]]

Right click on the project in the solution explorer and select Upgrade

 

[David Clegg]

Right click on the project in the solution explorer and select Upgrade

Are there many gotchas when migrating CF projects to 2.0, and is it
worth the hassle for existing 1.0 applications which have been tried
and tested in production? FWIW, we also use Smart Device Framework
v1.3.

We will be moving to VS.NET 2005 for ASP.NET development soon, and
because of this I'm wondering whether it's worth upgrading our CF
application to take advantage of any new features the 2.0 version of
the framework may offer.

--
Cheers,
David Clegg
(e-mail address removed)
http://cc.borland.com/Author.aspx?ID=72299

QualityCentral. The best way to bug Borland about bugs.
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"Marge, it takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen." - Homer
Simpson

 

[Daniel Moth]

The upgrade wizard will only upgrade your project/solution file format and
any resx files. Your code files remain intact. Another approach is to simply
add your files to a brand new VS2005 project:
http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/2005/08/how-to-upgrade-vs2003-projects-to.html

Just make a copy of your project and try it. There are many good reasons to
upgrade your project:
http://blogs.msdn.com/stevenpr/archive/2005/11/30/498481.aspx

Cheers
Daniel

 

[Graham McKechnie]

Daniel,

Thanks for the interesting links.

However, unless I missed a link somewhere, I didn't find anything that
addressed the issue of the forms being totally scewed up by the Upgrade
Project menu choice.

So I'll be still stuck, when I go back to this. I can't believe this is an
issue generally, I feel it must be something specific to this particular
project. I've got many other projects to convert, ones containing many more
forms, than this relatively simple project, so I need to find a work around.

Graham

 

[Daniel Moth]

Graham I was addressing Thore's generic request.

I have not encountered the issues you describe with my projects so I cannot
comment on that. If you can narrow it down to a reproducible sample I can
look at it.

Cheers
Daniel

 

[Graham McKechnie]

Daniel,

Graham I was addressing Thore's generic request.

Sorry about butting in. I actually thought I'd started a new thread re my
issue, but somehow my question ended up in Thore's thread. I didn't mean to
hijack his thread.

I have not encountered the issues you describe with my projects so I
cannot comment on that. If you can narrow it down to a reproducible sample
I can look at it.

I've just tried to reproduce one of the forms in VS2005 as a new app. I get
exactly the same problem. The form has a picturebox on the top half of the
form and a listview on the bottom half of the form. The two controls occupy
the whole form.
The picturebox is shrunk by about half its height, the control itself
appears to be the correct width, but the image now doesn't occupy the width
of the control. The listview is the correct width, but not the height. This
form was designed with default settings ie FormFactor - PocketPC 2003

It appears to be a screen resolution problem that VS2005 doesn't seem to
automatically handle as does VS2003. The device I'm deploying to is an HP
hx4770 which has a high resolution screen (480x640) instead of (240x320). I
can get exactly the same effect if I run the test app to the emulator Pocket
PC 2003 SE VGA. Running it on Pocket PC SE Emulator, the program executes
correctly.

It would appear to be a dpi issue that is not automatically handled as it is
in VS2003. I certainly didn't have to change any code in VS2003 when
deploying to different devices with VS2003. I've got an older hp 5450
hanging around somewhere, so I'll dig that out and give it a shot on that.
But I'm willing to bet that it will work on that without any modification.

I'd appreciate any comments you may have on this issue. Is it something that
the Upgrade process doesn't handle automatically that we can handle within a
minimum amount of code? I may be wrong, but I would have expected all these
issues to have been addressed by VS2005.

Graham

 

[Daniel Moth]

I am shooting in the dark here as I don't have that scenario or the
resources to test it right now... try playing with the AutoScaleMode
property of your form...

If you think it is an upgrade issue, replicate your form design in both a
new v2 project and a new v1 project. Then upgrade the v1 project and see
what is different between them (that is what I would do if you posted a
sample).

Cheers
Daniel

 

[John Socha-Leialoha]

I switched from VS 2003 to 2005 the moment it was released and I don't
regret doing that. However, I chose to stick with CF 1.0 development
rather than switching to CF 2.0.

Why? Several reasons. First, CF 1.0 is in ROM on many devices, so my
users won't have to install the new CF (there are no shipping devices
that include CF 2.0 in ROM as far as I know). Second, CF 1.0 still
supports 2002 devices (probably not a very big issue). Third, CF 1.0
starts up faster than CF 2.0, and the performance of my code, once
loaded, is just fine. Fourth, I'd probably have to change a certain
amount of code to get it to work on 2.0, and I'm just about ready to
ship so I didn't want the schedule to slip (any more than it already has).

-- John

 

[Daniel Moth]

That is all fair but there is always the flip side (note that I am not
particularly trying to convince you personally, but think this should be
here for the archives):
- Sticking with CF v1 just for PPC2002 is not a real argument IMO. The
lifetime of this devices is shorter than 4 years.
- Relying on CF being in ROM means you are not deploying the Service Packs
which wouldn't be wise. If you are going to deploy the v1 SPs, you might as
well deploy v2.
- On the perf: Content users is fine but delighted users is better. I'd also
be interested in numbers of v1 being faster compared to v2
- Having to "probably change code" is not a strong argument. Going through a
short exercise to prove that, would be.
- Being ready to ship is more of a reason to move to v2 since you have
VS2005. The diagnostics in v2 are so much richer I would feel more
comfortable if my app was running against it when I got bugs reported.
(global exception handling alone buys me that).

Also check out this:
http://blogs.msdn.com/stevenpr/archive/2005/11/30/498481.aspx

Cheers
Daniel