We’ve seen some questions in the forum about upgrading your current Visual Studio LightSwitch applications (LightSwitch V1) to Visual Studio 11 Beta (LightSwitch V2) so I thought I’d post some quick tips here on how to make the upgrade process a smooth as possible.

After you install Visual Studio 11 Beta:

1. Install any extensions you are using in your V1 project onto the machine where you installed Visual Studio 11 Beta

Extensions need to be installed first into VS11 before you upgrade because of the way .VSIX packages work – they are installed per instance of Visual Studio. Many extensions will install and work in both versions, however some do not at this time. Depending on the vendor, you will have to contact them if they are supporting VS 11 Beta yet.

These LightSwitch team extensions were tested and we released updates if necessary.

I also personally tested the Office Integration Pack and that works correctly as well. If you are looking for an upgrade of the Bing Map Control that was included in the original Training Kit, an update is included in this sample: Contoso Construction - LightSwitch Advanced Sample (Visual Studio 11 Beta)

I also encourage you to check out the new LightSwitch Cosmopolitan Shell and Theme for Visual Studio 11. This extension is only supported in VS11 projects.

2. Disable any Extensions that are not supported in Visual Studio 11 Beta

If you have an extension that will not install in VS 11 then you will need to open the V1 project in VS 2010 and disable the extension first. From the Project Properties, select the Extensions tab and uncheck the extension in the list.

3. Open your project in Visual Studio 11 Beta to start the conversion process

Now you are ready to open your project in Visual Studio 11 Beta. The conversion process will make a backup of your original source and then start the conversion.

4. Re-enable your extensions and build your project

Once the conversion is done you should see your project in the Solution Explorer. (If you don’t, try closing VS and restarting). Now you can go to the Project Properties –> Extension tab, and re-enable your extensions by checking them off in the list. Finally build your project and make sure there are no errors.

Note: If you have Visual Studio 11 Beta installed on the same machine as Visual Studio 2010 then you do not need to go through this process of re-installing extensions. The upgrade process will tell you if any extensions are not compatible.

Wrap Up

Hopefully this will help you avoid any upgrade pain. However, we’re still investigating upgrade issues so if you have any problems please report them in the forum. There are a lot of team members there to help: LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 Beta Forum

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community