installed 3.5 ok, what now?

[AMercer]

I just downloaded and installed fw 3.5 without any problems. VS 2005
help-about still shows fw 2.0 SP1. When I load a project, it runs as before.
When I do help and search for WCF, I get no hits as one should with 2.0 help
files.

So, I downloaded and installed 3.5 but VS 2005 appears to be unaware of it.
What do I do now?

FYI, my upgrade history is:

..net vs 2005 fw 2.0 bought and installed 9/27/2007
..net fw 2.0 sp1 downloaded and installed 1/5/2008.
..net fw 3.0 sp1 installed 1/5/2008 (I don't recall asking for it).
..net fw 3.5 downloaded and installed 3/30/2008 (the date of this post).

 

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

I just downloaded and installed fw 3.5 without any problems. VS 2005
help-about still shows fw 2.0 SP1. When I load a project, it runs as before.
When I do help and search for WCF, I get no hits as one should with 2.0 help
files.

So, I downloaded and installed 3.5 but VS 2005 appears to be unaware of it.
What do I do now?

You install VS2008. You can't easily build .NET 3.5 applications with
VS2005.

 

[AMercer]

You install VS2008. You can't easily build .NET 3.5 applications with

VS2005.

Ok. At MS download center, under "Microsoft Visual Studio 2008", I find 24
downloads, none of which is vs 2008. Which of these 24 (below) is vs 2008,
or if none, can you show me where vs2008 is?

Microsoft® Silverlight™ 2 SDK Beta 1
ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview
ASP.NET MVC Preview 2
Microsoft Visual Basic Power Packs 3.0
Visual Studio 2008 Training Kit
Microsoft® Silverlight™ 2 SDK Beta 1 Documentation
Microsoft® Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition Power Tools
Requirements Management with Team System White Paper
Visual Studio® 2008 Web Deployment Projects
Team Foundation Power Tools
Web Service Software Factory: Modeling Edition - February 2008
Visual Studio® Team System 2008 VSTS VPC Image (Trial)
Source Code Outliner PowerToy for Visual Studio 2008
Web Service Software Factory: Modeling Edition Source Code - February 2008
Visual Studio Team System Web Access 2008 Power Tool
MDAC 2.81 bootstrapper package
VSTO Power Tools v1.0.0.0
Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider
Visual Studio® Team System 2008 TFS VPC Image (Trial)
MFC Hierarchy Charts
Visual Studio 2008 Rhythm Training Virtual PC (Vista)
Visual Studio 2008 Rhythm Training Virtual PC (Windows Server 2003)
Visual Studio Extensibility White Paper
Team System Architecture Edition Power Tools

 

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

Ok. At MS download center, under "Microsoft Visual Studio 2008", I find 24
downloads, none of which is vs 2008. Which of these 24 (below) is vs 2008,
or if none, can you show me where vs2008 is?

That depends on which version you want. There's the free Express
version, available from http://microsoft.com/express or
Standard/Pro/Team System which most people will download via MSDN
subscriptions (or install from MSDN distribution DVDs).

 

[AMercer]

or if none, can you show me where vs2008 is?

That depends on which version you want. There's the free Express
version, available from http://microsoft.com/express or
Standard/Pro/Team System which most people will download via MSDN
subscriptions (or install from MSDN distribution DVDs).

I develop only in VB, and only Windows apps and Class libraries (and
possibly a service in the future). Most of my projects reference only
System, System.Drawing, and System.Windows.Forms. My imported namespaces are
usually Microsoft.VisualBasic, System, and within System, Collections,
Collections.Generic, Drawing, Diagnostics, Windows.Forms, and Math. A
partial list of System namespaces I have never used (and probably never will
use) is ComponentModel, Configuration, Data, EnterpriseServices, Management,
Messaging, Security (not sure here), Transactions, Web, and Xml. I use the
Microsoft.VisualBasic namespace, but nothing else under Microsoft. So,
there are vast sections of the .net world that I don't touch.

I currently use vs 2005 professional. Do you think I could get by with vs
2008 express? What would I lose by using express vs Standard/Pro/Team?
(Possibly this information is available in microsoft.com, but I get lost
trying to find my way around there).

TIA for any advice.

 

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

I develop only in VB, and only Windows apps and Class libraries (and
possibly a service in the future). Most of my projects reference only
System, System.Drawing, and System.Windows.Forms. My imported namespaces are
usually Microsoft.VisualBasic, System, and within System, Collections,
Collections.Generic, Drawing, Diagnostics, Windows.Forms, and Math. A
partial list of System namespaces I have never used (and probably never will
use) is ComponentModel, Configuration, Data, EnterpriseServices, Management,
Messaging, Security (not sure here), Transactions, Web, and Xml. I use the
Microsoft.VisualBasic namespace, but nothing else under Microsoft. So,
there are vast sections of the .net world that I don't touch.

I currently use vs 2005 professional. Do you think I could get by with vs
2008 express? What would I lose by using express vs Standard/Pro/Team?
(Possibly this information is available in microsoft.com, but I get lost
trying to find my way around there).

I suspect you'd be fine with Express. You'd lose unit testing which is
in Pro now (but there are other free options available) and I think
some of the designers (deployment, for example?) - but you can still
write any kind of .NET app.

Probably the best thing to do is *try* Express, and then if you feel a
feature's missing, see if you can find out if it's in Standard/Pro.

 

[AMercer]

I suspect you'd be fine with Express. You'd lose unit testing which is

in Pro now (but there are other free options available) and I think
some of the designers (deployment, for example?) - but you can still
write any kind of .NET app.

Probably the best thing to do is *try* Express, and then if you feel a
feature's missing, see if you can find out if it's in Standard/Pro.

Thanks for your advice - I appreciate it very much.

 

[Marc Gravell]

Just a footnote; in your original post, you mention WCF;

WCF is actually part of .NET 3.0, which works just fine with VS2005 (you
just add references to System.ServiceModel, System.IdentityModel, etc)

There are also some VS2005 extension for WCF (comms) and WPF (gui) which
make life easier:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=F54F5537-CC86-4BF5-AE44-F5A1E805680D

and for WF (workflow):

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=5D61409E-1FA3-48CF-8023-E8F38E709BA6

However! I would absolutely agree that the easiest way to develop WCF etc is
to use VS2008; the tooling is just a bit more refined. It also means you get
all the C# 3 goodies, and access to .NET 3.5 features like LINQ.

Marc