Question

I’ve been tasked with maintaining a Visual Studio 2005 solution but I only have access to Visual Studio 2008. Whenever I try to open the old solution in Visual Studio 2008 then the IDE is keen on converting the solution to the new version.

What exactly happens during this conversion and is there a way to stop it (since I need to deliver the code so that it can be opened in 2005)?

Answer 1

Jon Skeet made a post about making VS2008 solutions coexist with VS2005.

The solution file will have a minor difference in version numbers as @Igor Brejc described. However there are also some changes made to the project files. Those changes are described at this article where there also is a nifty VS2005-VS2008 converter application available:

+==========================+====================+==========================+
| Element                  | VS2005             | VS2008                   |
+==========================+====================+==========================+
| Tools Version            | absent             | 3.5                      |
+--------------------------+--------------------+--------------------------+
| Product Version          | 8.0.50727          | 9.0.21022                |
+--------------------------+--------------------+--------------------------+
| Old Tools Version        | absent             | 2.0 (if converted)       |
+--------------------------+--------------------+--------------------------+
| Target Framework Version | absent             | 2.0                      |
+--------------------------+--------------------+--------------------------+
| Bootstrapper             | .NET Framework 2.0 | .NET Framework 2.0 (x86) |
+--------------------------+--------------------+--------------------------+
| Import Project           | $(MSBuildBinPath)  | $(MSBuildToolsPath)      |
+--------------------------+--------------------+--------------------------+

The application in the above link will convert both solution and project files in a VS2008 solution to VS2005 and vice versa.