Moving a project from 2003 to 2005

[John Dann]

Just getting started with VB2005 and unsure how best to move active
VB2003 projects into the VB2005 environment.

Nornally I've versioned my VB2003 projects at specific development
points by starting a new (blank) project and using Add Existing Item
to import all the files from the previous project version before
saving in a new folder location belonging to the new project.

But on doing this in the VB2005 environment I find I've got a couple
of 'multiple definitions with identical signatures' errors in code
belonging to the form designer itself. Presumably some aspects of the
way the 2003 form designer worked are now deprecated or otherwise
unworkable in the 2005 designer.

Any suggestions as to how to fix these errors please?

JGD

 

[John Dann]

Anyone, please?

JGD

 

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

John,

Are you sure it are "Errors". In VB2005 is now added "Warnings", I cannot
say they mean nothing, however it is not more than it say, warnings and they
are given on many places a VB programmer would not even think on to do it
and in the idea of some of us even to often from a kind of C# thinking (See
the long thread now active about passing the "").

I assume that you are talking about window forms projects.

I hope this gives an idea.

Cor

 

[John Dann]

John,

Are you sure it are "Errors". In VB2005 is now added "Warnings", I cannot
say they mean nothing, however it is not more than it say, warnings and they
are given on many places a VB programmer would not even think on to do it
and in the idea of some of us even to often from a kind of C# thinking (See
the long thread now active about passing the "").

I assume that you are talking about window forms projects.

Thanks. Yes this is a Windows Form project. And yes these are
definitely 'errors' - there are many other 'warnings' (it's a
reasonably large project). But the warnings I can understand for the
most part and deal with if necessary. The errors are stopping me
compiling the project under 2005.

I've found the Convert Project option, which seems to run -
unsurprisingly - if you open the 2003 project from its original
location in 2005. But AFAICS the code files (ie the .vb files) remain
unchanged.

I guess what I'm confused about is that the automatically-generated
form code, which is what is generating my errors, isn't changed in the
..vb files, yet something external to them is clearing the errors in a
converted 2005 environment. But until I understand this issue then I'm
not comfortable continuing to work in 2005 because I don't know how -
reliably - to make a new version of my project.

JGD

 

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

John,

Can you give us an example in code? Beside that anoying 'multiple
definitions with identical signatures' I hope that it will be fixed in SP1.
In those cases as with the dialog.result, you have to give the full path.

System.Windows.Forms.DialogResult.OK

Cor

 

[John Dann]

Can you give us an example in code?

Well if necessary I will, but it's not so much a specific error that
I'm concerned about, more that I don't understand or know how to do
something that's important to me. Can I go back to my original
question?

In the past under VB2003 I've always found it useful to version my
programs. In other words, when I've achieved a development milestone
with a given code version, to freeze that code and begin a new
development stage with a new copy of the code from the previous stage.

To do this, I start a new empty (eg WinForms) project with an
incremented name and with the files saved in a new folder location, eg
MyProject8xx, and with that project open then use 'Add Existing Item'
to import all the .vb files (and only the .vb files) from the previous
version.

This has worked fine in the past within VB2003. But in trying it under
VB2005 I get these various errors apaprently associated with the Form
Designer-generated code. This is true whether or not I try to import
the .vb files from an 'old' VB2003 folder or one that's been opened
under VB2005 and notionally converted.

It seems that there is something external to the .vb files that needs
importing too. (This seems a bit of a backward step or at least
inelegant in that the complete code for the converted file is no
longer contained within eg a form's .vb code. But be that as it
may...)

Is there a better way of versioning my projects under VB2005?

JGD

 

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

John,

You can copy complete folders to create those milestones. Is that what you
ask (I assume you are not using SourceSave). I do that for 2003 and for
2005.

Cor

 

[John Dann]

No not using SourceSave, And yes folder copying is one option for the
milestone versions. But:

I did like the idea of importing individual .vb files because it meant
that by importing only those specific files I could clear out at
every stage any classes or forms that I had started but then thought
better of and subsequently discarded but not deleted. This 'cleaning'
process isn't quite as simple to apply with folder copies.

What is the minimum file/folder set that I can copy? Maybe I could
copy all of the files in the top level of the project folder but none
of the subfolders, ie \bin and the like. Yes I may need to reference
external dll's again but I don't mind that - it helps me to stop a
project going stale with references that are no longer needed. And a
recompile isn't a big deal.

And I need to increment the project name for the new version, but
maybe that's easy even after a folder copy. I'll need to check into
that.

JGD

 

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

John,

A not converted VBNet form class has at least three files

The form.vb, the form.designer.vb and the form.resx

The same is with a generated dataset which has even more.

However there are more file types now. I would keep it with copying it
complete to a compressed folder.

Just my idea.

Cor