I hate and loath the Visual Studio Conversion Wizard
Well, at work (and at home) I have moved to Visual Studio 2008 quite some time ago. But there simply are a lot of solutions and projects around from the pre 2008 era. Not just in our (or my) source control, but almost any OS project on the web has not moved to 2008 (yet). And there are loads of examples that are still using 2003 solutions.
So any time I come across one of those I always wince. Just the thought of going through the next few steps, just the anticipation gives me a serious headache every time. Because noooo, I can’t just double click on the solution and be done with. Nope, somebody at Microsoft was clever and managed to version brand those solutions. So if I can’t catch the little 8 instead of the 9 in the icon (!) of the solution file … my visual studio 2005 will open. Argh. So now that guy managed to brand me into “look really, really close at the icon, dude”. And I don’t like that. I want to have a SETTING that overrides this stupid behavior. It just does not make sense to me. Because the only option to turn off that behavior is – to uninstall VS2005. 
Well, that’s number one of the settings I am really, really missing. But that’s not even the worst part, I can reason with that – it’s a cross program behavior and maybe they don’t want to mess with that.
What I really don’t get is that there still is no way to default the hidious Visual Studio Conversion Wizard to
- Don’t show up. (I really, really don’t care)
- Convert without backup. (who needs a backup in the age of source control)
- … and don’t bother with the little check mark about “Show the conversion log when blablabla”. If I want to see it I KNOW WHERE TO FIND IT.
Stupid Dear Visual Studio Conversion Wirzard: Please, please, pretty please, do only EVER pipe up if there actually was an error. No, actually, even then, don’t pipe up. In that case just silently open the conversion log. I’ll KNOW what you mean by it. And oh, if you find a reference to a 2008 csproj file in a 2005 sln THAT does NOT count as an error. Be happy that you DON’T have to do ANYTHING about it and walk away.
Please Visual Studio Conversion Wizard Writing Guy, please save my time and my nerves and implement a little tiny minuscule setting to make me happy. Please. The VS migration experience would really benefit.
Hi Tobias,
By default, VS solution files (*.sln) are bound to the Visual Studio Version Selector, which starts the right version of Visual Studio by examining the solution file. You can bind solution files to Visual Studio 2008 by right clicking on one and selecting ‘Open with’, and then in ‘Choose program…’ select the Visual Studio 2008 executable and check ‘Always use the selected program to open this kind of file’.
This still does not prevent the solution conversion wizard from appearing, but at least you won’t have to deinstall VS 2005
Hope this helps!
Comment on February 1, 2008 @ 10:42:23
I’ve written a little project converter utility to make it easy to convert back and forth between VS2005 and VS2008. The ProjectConverter application is available as VB.Net/C# source code at: http://home.hot.rr.com/graye/Articles/ProjectConverter.htm
Comment on March 19, 2008 @ 23:15:26
Hey graye. 100 cool points.
thanks!
Comment on March 19, 2008 @ 23:18:57
Just disable this behavior under Extras/Options…
Comment on June 29, 2008 @ 17:24:38
Hey Hans,
could you be a bit more specific about “Extras/Options”? Thanks.
Tobi
Comment on June 30, 2008 @ 11:10:00
I have the opposite. It pisses me off that when I open a project with the version SELECTOR, that I can not SELECT anything. It’s not a selector, it’s a CONVERTER, and if I wanted to convert anything I will do that myself. I just want to OPEN an existing project. I really HATE the “SELECTOR”
Comment on July 21, 2009 @ 04:40:07