= FDO RFC 18 - Migrate to Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 =

This page contains an change request (RFC) for the FDO Open Source project.  
More FDO RFCs can be found on the [wiki:FDORfcs RFCs] page.


== Status == 
 
||RFC Template Version||(1.0)|| 
||Submission Date|| April 14, 2008 ||
||Last Modified|| Greg Boone [[Timestamp]]||
||Author||Orest Halustchak||
||RFC Status||Adopted|| 
||Implementation Status||In Progress||
||Proposed Milestone||3.4.0.0||
||Assigned PSC guide(s)||Greg Boone||
||'''Voting History'''||May 8, 2008||
||+1|| Greg, Orest, Harris, Frank ||
||+0|| Jason ||
||-0|| Mateusz ||
||-1|| ||
 
== Overview ==

This is a proposal to switch support from the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 compiler to the Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 compiler.  After this is done, developers will need to use Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 to compile !FDO Open Source on Microsoft Windows.

== Motivation ==

The Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 IDE is the most recent version. It is claimed to be "The highest quality Visual Studio release ever ensures that you are more productive during development" (http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/B/D/3BDDC5D5-E8CF-4031-A12A-B072ECA27C42/VS2008PETopTenFSEMEA.doc) and has better support for more recent operating systems such as Vista. These benefits plus the better code checking are the reasons we should upgrade to it.

Note that there is a corresponding RFC for MapGuide: http://trac.osgeo.org/mapguide/wiki/MapGuideRfc47

== Proposed Solution ==

 * All solution and project files in the trunk but not the 3.3 or 3.2 branches will be upgraded to VS 2008 format
 * All code will be recompiled and code changes made as appropriate
 * All unit tests will be run and must pass before the above changes can be submitted.

== Implications ==

We will no longer support VS 2005.  Note that this should not be an issue because 
 * There is a VS 2008 express edition for those using the free compiler.
 * Both VS 2005 and 2008 can be installed at the same time so it will be possible to work with the branches using VS 2005 and the trunk using VS 2008.  (And of course when the 3.4 or subsequent branches are created, they will continue to use VS 2008.)

== Test Plan ==

No new unit tests will be created for this.  However, the existing unit tests will be run to ensure that they still pass.

== Funding/Resources ==

Autodesk