Visual Studio 2005 is not expected to be supported in XNA Game Studio 3.0. If you purchased VS 2005 (non-express) for use with XNA Game Studio, please help petition MS to support this expensive piece of software that is obsolete for many of us in 8-10 months.

I put up a petition here so vote for it!

https://connect.microsoft.com/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=336350&SiteID=226

 

We aren't going to have VS 2005 support. In this particular case, it doesn't really matter how many people vote on it. There are unfortunate compatibility issues between VS 2005 and VS 2008, and the only way we could put VS 2005 support in XGS 3.0 is to remove VS 2008 support. We aren't going to do that.

Your Visual Studio 2005 will not be obsolete, and neither will XGS 2.0. They will not be the latest versions, but they won't be obsolete. If you want to say that VS 2005 is obsolete because it's not the latest version, then that happened five months ago already, not eight months into the future.

Sorry to put it this way, but there's no point in getting your hopes up for this particular request.

 

First, I think it's great that you clearly communcate a fixed decision. That helps a lot for the community.

Second, I understand totally how you need to make certain decisions up front, and that you've already taken into account all the variables. I'm not criticizing that decision.

Third, however, I think you communicate un-clearly when you say it is "not possible" to support both VS 2005 and VS 2008. You clearly can, using some variant of separate compilation, separate product installs, side-by-side installation, and other such shenanigans. After all there are plenty of applications out there that support multiple operating systems, not just multiple IDEs. I'd still believe you if you say it's too expensive to support multiple parallel branches for the two environments, but saying it's "impossible" will raise heckles and cause challenges. Like this one ;-)

Thanks for letting us know. And hopefully you can spend the time you saved on not supporting 2005 on instead making the Xbox performance good (the GC and FP support are... poor).

jwatte:

Third, however, I think you communicate un-clearly when you say it is "not possible" to support both VS 2005 and VS 2008. You clearly can, using some variant of separate compilation, separate product installs, side-by-side installation, and other such shenanigans. After all there are plenty of applications out there that support multiple operating systems, not just multiple IDEs. I'd still believe you if you say it's too expensive to support multiple parallel branches for the two environments, but saying it's "impossible" will raise heckles and cause challenges. Like this one ;-)

In the purely theoretical world of technical possibilities and infinite resources, yes, it is certainly possible. In the real world where we are operating under definite resource constraints, it is not.

I did not say it was not technically possible, given infinite or unrealistic resources. I just said it was not possible to do it without giving up VS 2008 support. To be more clear, not possible given the parameters of the decision -- which include time, resources, amount of effort we are willing to put forth, desired user experience, etc. The existence of a theoretical solution doesn't change whether it is possible or not in XGS 3.0.

I cited the incompatibility because it makes the technically-possible solutions ludicrously expensive.

It would be great if this decision saved us time, but it doesn't. It would be like saying we are not going to support PS3 in XGS 3.0. We can't just make that claim and magically get the time it would have taken to improve other features. ... But just in case it does work that way, we are not going to support PS3 in XGS 3.0! ;-)

Stephen,

Thank you for the explaination and I really appreciate somebody at Microsoft responding so I don't get my hopes up.

In my mind, commercially sold software in particular is obsolete as soon as the developer stops supporting it and/or the transition period to the new version is over. The software might not be obsolete in the sense that I can't use it for other purposes, but usually technology moves forward and new features aren't supported on previous major versions. In my case, since I exclusively purchased VS 2005 for use with XNA GS 2 it will be of no use if I want to use GS 3. I will have to upgrade to VS 2008. I hope this is not a pattern that will continue frequently....

 

 

I'm sorry to hear that you purchased VS 2005 specifically to code XNA, but I would have to say that you're in the monority. Most peple would either be using VS 2005 because they already had it, or Express if they didn't have it already. May I ask if there was any reason in particular that you bought VS 2005 instead of using Express?

The debugger in 2005 is better -- for example, it can do threads.

Anyway, if you want to purchase applications from Microsoft to do development, a MSDN subscription will pretty quickly pay for itself. You get the various Visual Studio versions with the subscription, and you also get a lot of other products (like copies of all the OS versions that you can test on, etc). Yes, you can't ship or re-sell the applications, or use the applications for "real" (like, an accounting package for your actual accounting), but when you're a developer targeting Microsoft platforms, a MSDN subscription often makes a lot of sense.

However, if you paid student discount pricing for 2005, then MSDN is probably out of your league. And if you didn't, then you should actually have a free upgrade to 2008, because 2008 came out before Christmas, and I believe there was a grace program. Don't know if it's still in effect, though, but it's worth checking out.

You also may want to check out the www.heroshappenhere.com page and see if you can attend one of the MS events where they're giving out free copies of VS 2008.  Got mine last month and love it.

Microsoft SA must be cheap - we only got Trial versions of VS 2008.

*hmph*

[Mod: Edited post to remove some software legality questions]

 

Bill Reiss - MVP:

I'm sorry to hear that you purchased VS 2005 specifically to code XNA, but I would have to say that you're in the monority. Most peple would either be using VS 2005 because they already had it, or Express if they didn't have it already. May I ask if there was any reason in particular that you bought VS 2005 instead of using Express?

I bought a non-academic version online through ebay at a fairly reduced cost. It had the Authenticity Sticker and the original discs. I suspect it was a resold promotional version given away though. The main reason for this purchase is VS 2005 had the add-in support needed for integrated SVN.

jwatte:

The debugger in 2005 is better -- for example, it can do threads.

Anyway, if you want to purchase applications from Microsoft to do development, a MSDN subscription will pretty quickly pay for itself. You get the various Visual Studio versions with the subscription, and you also get a lot of other products (like copies of all the OS versions that you can test on, etc). Yes, you can't ship or re-sell the applications, or use the applications for "real" (like, an accounting package for your actual accounting), but when you're a developer targeting Microsoft platforms, a MSDN subscription often makes a lot of sense.

However, if you paid student discount pricing for 2005, then MSDN is probably out of your league. And if you didn't, then you should actually have a free upgrade to 2008, because 2008 came out before Christmas, and I believe there was a grace program. Don't know if it's still in effect, though, but it's worth checking out.

I suspect the MSDN subscription is at least in the thousand dollar range. Anything beyond $200-300 would be way too much for me as there usually are free open source options. Wish eclipse would work with XNA....

I know it isn't integrated, but you could try using Visual C# Express 2008 with TortoiseSVN to handle source control. I used to use TortoiseSVN for projects and it works great. Technically VisualSVN uses TortoiseSVN to handle all SVN commands; VisualSVN just sits as the add-in (and possibly the server if you installed it).

There are lots of workarounds for the things VC# Express can't do, but that's the point. VS 2005 doesn't require those workarounds. If you want to continue having that convenience with GS 3.0, you have to upgrade to VS 2008.

Going from VS 2005 to VC# Express 2008 means going from a nice, integrated set of tools to a nice IDE and a bunch of workarounds for everything else.

Of course, any further discussion at this point is moot, because GS 3.0 isn't going to support VS 2005 no matter how much we whine. We just have to decide whether the convenience is worth the cost. And, of course, whether we can convince our wives that we need a new development suite. ;-)

 

I've never understood integrated source control. It typically just makes the projects take longer to start up, and if the server happens to be offline (say, you're on a laptop), all bets are off. I much prefer to do my source control on the command line. Of course, not everyone has the same set of preferences, but I can heartily recommend it. Especially for something like Subversion, where you don't even need to unlock the file before editing, and source control is mostly for update, submit and merge.

jwatte:

I've never understood integrated source control. It typically just makes the projects take longer to start up, and if the server happens to be offline (say, you're on a laptop), all bets are off.

Some source control packages allow you to check out while offline, and have the actual checkout performed when the server is back up. (I believe perforce does this). I agree on the slowdown issue though.

I can understand why someone would find lack of source control integration painful, if they're using a source control program that works on the checkout, modify, checkin model, like perforce. It's a massive pain in the *** to use Visual Studio Express with that type of source control, in my experience.

Subversion is pretty easy to manage though. That's what I'm using right now.

Personally I'm just sticking with the express versions of Visual Studio. Now that I program for a living, I'm not really dedicated to programming at home any more, it's just something I do occasionally. I can't really afford to blow 700 quid on something that will be pretty useless in 1-2 years, when all the libraries I'm using start releasing using the solutions of the latest version, and I can no longer compile the newer versions of the libraries.

How much does a version of 2008 cost?

It is sad I'll pretty much be forced to pay to continue developing in XNA with a non-express version, or be forced back into using Express *shudders*.

I understand the decision to use VS2008. It is just unfortunate it puts many people in this same situation as I will be in.

Visual Studio 2008 - Pricing

 

$125 or so -- there are lots of vendors around that price point.
Note that that price doesn't include MSDN.

Well, I use TortoiseSVN and I'm fine with it, bu the problem with using non-integrated source control is when you want to rename files or move them (I just ended up not renaming anything). Even creating files is a two-step procedure since you must create it in VS and the add it using TortoiseSVN (or equivalent tool).      

If you have VS2005 you can get an upgrade version. It's price is 66% of the price of the full version. On the other hand, if you buy the full version I think you can sell VS2005 or use it on another computer.

I don't believe you can upgrade to VS2008 from 2005 if you got 2005 through MSDN.