upgrading from Visual studio 2003 .net to VS2005 or VS 2008 ?

[oyvind_sylta]

In order to use Intel Fortran for building 64bit Windows applications on our 32bit Windows XP computer my understanding is that we need to upgrade to either VS2005 or VS2008. We are making dll's from Fortran that we then link to our C++ GUI code (with QT and OpenGL). The C++ code uses the Microsoft compiler and is built with VS2005, and they do not want to change to VS2008 at the present time. Questions:

Can we combine VS2008/Fortran with VS2005/C++ (this would be our preferred solution)?
Is VS2005 recommended as a purchase option - Microsoft seems to want users to purchase VS2008?
We seem to be able to compile to 64bit on VS2003, but not link. Is this correct?
The 64bit applications will be run on Vista 64bit. Any special problems we need to consider?

Appreciate any comments. Hope to avoid stupid upgrading decisions.

Oyvind

[Steven_L_Intel1]

Perhaps I am missing something, but if you already have VS2005, just use that with Fortran. There's no real advantage to using VS2008 here.

If you are considering buying VS2008 just for Fortran, don't. Use the VS2005 Premier Partner Edition included with Intel Visual Fortran - it will support building 64-bit code. Note that you can't do C++ development with that bundled environment.

[oyvind_sylta]

the gui is coded using vs2005 and c++. this work is done in a different location and not by me. i need to upgrade from vs2003. can i then use vs2008 and still provide dll that can be linked into the gui with vs2005? or do we all need to be on the same visual studio version for this to work? oyvind

[Steven_L_Intel1]

Ok, I see. You can use VS2008 if you want, or the bundled VS2005, which would be my recommendation. If you purchased VS2008, you'd also have to install the VS2008 redistributables on the other system. You don't HAVE to be on the same VS version - the key is that if your DLL references VS DLLs, as it almost certainly will, then the system running the application has to have the run-time DLLs available.

[oyvind_sylta]

Thanks Steve,

I'll try the bundled VS2005.

Oyvind