Choices in conversion of solutions and projects to VS2008

On the weekend I am trying to catch up on my blogroll, and I have found several excellent posts on conversion between VS2005 and VS2008. Now that VS2008 is released, the conversion of code base from previous version will become a common problem, and here is some advise on dealing with that.

Of course simplest way would be just converting all solutions to VS2008 (see below why you do not have to convert projects). Here you have several choices:
- Open VS2005 solution in VS2008 and run the conversion wizard.
- Run VS2008 in command-line converting the solution in place in the background (that should be perfect if you have more than one solution :). Read more about magical command-line "/upgrade" switch in John Robbins blog post.
- Mess around with solution file in text editor. The difference between solution for VS2005 and VS2006 would be only the version specifier("Format Version 9.00" vs. "Format Version 10.00"). The difference in projects would be only MSBuild ToolsVersion attribute (that serves to define .NET toolset project is built with). Since all converted projects use 2.0, that can be easily set. Read in more detail about solution and project formats changes in DJ Park blog post.

Now, if you still need to do some development on VS2005 while doing development in VS2008 in the same solution, the best bet would be probably to create a new solution (e.g. "Solution_3.5.sln"). The projects that are using .NET 2.0 will build both in VS2005 and Orcas.

Personally, I will probably use the magnificent "/upgrade" command-line switch to convert all solutions while keeping in mind that I have an option to tweak the files by hand (sometimes it may come in handy if you need to quickly rollback certain solution to VS2005).

And another conclusion - reading blogs can be very useful and save lots of time :)