Write VB6 on Visual Studio 2008 without .NET support?

Question

I have to continue to support VB6 applications. I've got both VB6 (Visual Studio 6) installed and Visual Studio 2008 as well. Can I read and write to VB6 projects while in Visual Studio 2008? Will it damage or destroy my VB6 application? It would be very cool if I could free up a lot of space and get rid of Visual Studio 6.

Answer 1

Visual Studio 2008 can't compile VB6 applications. You could use it as a text editor only (though it will offer you the VB.NET IntelliSense, not VB6). However, you need Visual Studio 6 to be able to build your application.

Answer 2

The VB6 IDE will coexist along side the Visual Studio 2008 quite happily.

The VB.NET LANGUAGE is related but not compatible with VB6. Conversion between VB6 and VB.NET is problematic. There are a lot of subtle and gross differences between the two making them effectively separate languages.

You need to keep both separate IDES and libraries installed on your computer in order to deal with both languages.

If you need for the two interoperate you can do this by creating COM libraries. Both languages can consume COM Libraries created in the other.