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I'm using visual studio 2008 for a classic asp application. Will I be able to upgrade to visual studio 2010?

Ryan
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    Classic ASP files are just text files, any text processor will support it. I used to use Notepad++ to maintain Classic ASP sites. – Esteban Küber Mar 17 '10 at 14:03
  • Plus 2008 does not support classic ASP. So what is the question - MS will not ask support for a 10 year RETIRED technology. – TomTom Mar 17 '10 at 14:04
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    @voyager: So are .cs files, you can develop C# in Notepad++ and then compile with csc.exe. However if you want good intelisense and debugging you would be better of using an IDE like VS 2008. The same is true for Classic ASP. – AnthonyWJones Mar 17 '10 at 14:09
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    @TomTom: Actually the SP1 for VS2008 added support for Classic ASP. There are still too many large companies with too much invested in ASP developments for Microsoft to drop ASP. Tools such as Classic ASP and SQL Server have greater longevity since they exist in the end-user environment. A software house can switch from C++ to C# without it bothering their customers much. However the same cannot be said for Classic ASP, the need to do some dev in Classic ASP will remain for some time to come. – AnthonyWJones Mar 17 '10 at 14:15
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    OUCH. Seriously. I hoped it died somewhere along the way. I remember painfully the days of ASP... ;( – TomTom Mar 17 '10 at 14:39
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    @TomTom: Yes I can imagine that Classic ASP without being able to deploy binaries to a hosted service would be painful. However in combination with VB6 I found ASP to be very productive. – AnthonyWJones Mar 17 '10 at 17:17
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    @TomTom I actually preferred Classic to .Net. ASP.Net took too much of the control out of the developers' hands. – adamcodes Mar 18 '10 at 18:50

6 Answers6

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Yes, classic ASP can be developed just fine in VS2010 as it does in VS2008 SP1.

AnthonyWJones
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    @Eduardo: I'm using VS2010 right now editing an existing ASP classic website, works fine. So unless MS do something really mental and pull ASP support out of VS2010 before RTM then I think my statement is fairly sound without a source of reference. – AnthonyWJones Mar 17 '10 at 20:51
  • Don't be mad, just telling "I'm using it" is fine for me, but was not stated in the answer. – Eduardo Molteni Mar 17 '10 at 22:28
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    @Eduardo: Thanks, I'm not mad ;) – AnthonyWJones Mar 18 '10 at 07:39
  • I am using VS2010 and it is treating .inc files as plain text files - no syntax highlighting or Intellisense at all. So I'd put an asterisk after that Yes... – East of Nowhere Jan 02 '12 at 19:42
  • @AnthonyWJones, you said in another post (Cassini) does not support class asp, here you say it does. Does VS really support classic ASP, knowing that you should be able to fire up the application after you run it. – TheTechGuy Mar 09 '12 at 02:59
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    @Thecrocodilehunter: No Cassini is __not__ VS2010. Here I'm saying you can _develop_ Classic ASP with VS2010. You can also _debug_ ASP with VS2010 by attaching to an IIS W3WP process. You cannot how ever _run_ ASP without help from IIS. Cassini is the developement web server which comes with VS but will only deliver static and .NET code, it does not support ISAPI filters, extensions or script engines. – AnthonyWJones Mar 09 '12 at 07:56
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I've found this msdn page

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms241740.aspx

it says:

Although the primary focus of Web debugging in Visual Studio 2010 is ASP.NET, you can also debug legacy ASP Web applications.

ASP Web applications consist of scripts, which run on the client in .htm files and on the server in .asp files; the Global.asa file; and .cdf files. Scripts can be in VBScript, JScript, or a mix of VBScript and JScript. They may also be mixed with HTML code and COM objects. You can debug ASP Web applications containing all of these elements.

Right now I'm working on classic asp pages with visual studio 2008 an everything works fine, I can even debug classic asp...

Still couldn't try it with vs 2010, but the page above gives me some hope...

Community
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opensas
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Usually you can manually deploy an asp web site direclty to the inetpub\wwwroot folder (just paste all of your required web page files to the wwwroot directory), where your default.asp page should reside at the root of wwwroot, if that makes any sense.

Then you can create an empty web site with a single project, start your web site by entering http:\localhost in to a new browser window, and you should see your default page displayed.

You can add all of the extermely old asp files to your new fangeled visual studio 2010 application directly from the wwwroot directory.

You should be able to compile your application but you won't be able to debug it at this point.

To debug the ancient application, simply attach to the internet explorer process with the title of your outdated web application (or the wp3p process....), and you will then have debugging functionality.

Or, you can wait for the old yet useful app to throw an error and then use visual studio 2010 as the J.I.T.debugger. Hope this helps as well.

Happy coding! (if that is possible in classic asp, thank GOD for visual studio)

(-:

David McGhee
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To get VS2010 to support .inc files as well as .asp files, see the related question Can Visual Studio 2010 do ".inc" file syntax highlighting?

VS2010 syntax highlighting for .inc files isn't very good even with the Web Form Editor in use; the HTML shows up fine but the VBScript looks like plain text.

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East of Nowhere
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For anyone who wants Syntax Highlighting in VS 2010 and can't get it working. I think this works.

Tools>Options>TextEditor>FileExtension

Add the extension ASP and it should be attached to "HTML Editor with Encoding".

thinklarge
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I updated my project from VS2008 to VS2010 and everything has been going alright.

In order to get debugging to work with javascript in a script block I have to add a debugger; statement to get it to break. If you have the javascript in a seperate file you can debug with just a break point. The Classic asp will still debug if I attach to the w3wp process.

The javascript intellisense has been working better for me in VS2010 than in VS2008. In VS2008 I had issues with it crashing when I stopped debugging classic ASP. In VS2010 I don't have that problem any more.

Overall I'd say VS2010 does classic ASP development better than VS2008.

Ryan
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    How can you say that? VS2010 doesn't support code highlighting or intellisense autocomplete. I think that is the bare minimum for what qualifies as "support". – MikeMurko Jan 13 '12 at 20:31