Visual Studio 2010 and platform compatibility?

Question

Is there a section in Visual Studio 2010 where it will give me an overview of what operating systems my program will run on based on what assemblies and controls I'm using? I'm curious if there's such a tool I can utilize before I go setting up a whole bunch of VM's to test the program in...

Answer 1

Dependency Walker may help. It won't tell you what OS but what dll's and assemblies are needed.

http://dependencywalker.com/

Answer 2

Programs created by Visual Studio 2010 are intended to be used on Microsoft operating systems and for all practical purposes this includes:

• Windows XP
• Windows Vista
• Windows 7

and the various server flavors and 32-bit and 64-bit flavors of those operating systems and their service packs. In general, almost all programs/projects you can create with Visual Studio can run on all of these operating systems if properly installed.

In particular, since this a C# question, the .NET platforms (eg v3.5 and v4.0) are fully supported on all these platforms. However, you will need to either manually install the .NET Framework on older operating system like Windows XP or create and use an installer.

But in short, your C# .NET will run on all modern Microsoft operating systems when properly installed. That's the theory. Now you still have to test with virtual machines.