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I have a VB6.0 application, created by someone in this company before me. Now I have to make some changes in it, is it possible to compile a VB6 project in VS2003 or VS2008?? If yes, then how? Do I need to do something special for that.

If no, Can I install VB6 as seperate app on my machine where I have both VS2003 and VS2008 installed?

Thanks for help.

Zinx
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3 Answers3

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Check out this similar question: Write VB6 on Visual Studio 2008 without .NET support?

In short, it is not possible to open/compile VB6 projects in Visual Studio 2003 or later.

As far as I know, there's no problem in having VB6 IDE and VS2003 installed on the same machine.

Community
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bernhof
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  • You can compile VB6 projects from the command line, so I suppose it's possible you could mangle a Visual Studio project to run the VB6 compiler when you click Build. I can't imagine it would be worth it though. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/478241/vb6-compilation-from-command-line – MarkJ Jan 05 '10 at 13:02
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You can install VB6.0 on the same machine.

That said, if you open the project in a newer version it should try to convert it for you. There may be a few snags here or there, but it mostly does a good job.

GManNickG
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  • I tried it opening the VB project in VS2008, and it converted it into .NET. But its missing lots of functions used in code. So I thought of installing VB6 rather than fixing lots of errors, which I might do in free time after developing the new requirements. Thanks for ur reply. – Zinx Jan 04 '10 at 22:41
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    Yeah, the conversion is usually rather poor. – Lilith River Jan 04 '10 at 22:43
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    Yeah, the conversion is troublesome. However, it does provide a report on problem areas that it couldn't convert. Has anyone attempted to see what happens if a VB6 app that uses variants is converted to VB.NET with the 3.5 framework? I want to try it but don't have a copy of VB6 to play with. – ajawad987 Jan 04 '10 at 23:17
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You can install VB6.0 side-by-side. Yes, conversion to .NET is available, but it will be a nightmare for all but the most trivial projects - the APIs are completely different, and not everything maps. You're probably better off either

a) Sticking with VB6

or

b) Porting to C#, IronPython or even a non-Microsoft language (if you are allowed).

Lilith River
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  • Rewriting in another language is usually the wrong choice. There's detailed discussion of VB Migration in these questions. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/vb6-migration – MarkJ Jan 05 '10 at 09:22