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There are some really great features in .NET 4.0 that I would like to start using but I am not comfortable making the change to VS 2010 just yet. Is there a way to use the .NET 4.0 beta in VS 2008?

Michael Kniskern
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    You happy using the .net 4.0 *beta* but your not happy with vs2010. What's your reason for using one beta but not the other? Personally, neither should be used for live apps while they are still in beta. – Simon P Stevens Jul 30 '09 at 20:29
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    @Simon: Ever consider perhaps not everyone can afford the latest Visual Studio upgrade? I personally think it's lame MS requires developers to upgrade to their latest dev tool to develop for the latest framework version. – devios1 May 24 '10 at 23:48
  • possible duplicate of [Can I develop for .NET Framework 4 in Visual Studio 2008?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1836410/can-i-develop-for-net-framework-4-in-visual-studio-2008) – Peter Mortensen Jul 22 '15 at 19:26

5 Answers5

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no, this is not possible, .NET 4.0 requires VS 2010 to be able to target/build.

Mitchel Sellers
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I don't think there is - the IDE is usually tied to a particular version of the framework, and 2008 has been the first version to allow you to target a "non-native" (so to speak) version of the framework, instead of just the matching version.

While Microsoft might add support later, I wouldn't expect them to, though I would expect 2010 to be able to target different versions aside from 4.0 (I haven't used it, so it may do this and I don't know it). Update: According to this, 2010 targets 2, 3, 3.5, and 4.

To target 4.0, you'll have to use 2010 - at least for now, and probably indefinitely.

Community
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SqlRyan
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    Adding .NET 4.0 support to Visual Studio 2008 is a costly operation. Besides this, Microsoft wants us to buy Visual Studio 2010. Two reasons why Microsoft will not add .NET 4.0 support to Visual Studio 2008. – Steven Feb 24 '10 at 11:19
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Some of new stuff that will be shipped with 4.0 were released as "extensions" and "CTPs", for example Parallels Extensions for .NET 3.5 will eventually be included in 4.0 but you can start playing with it now in VS 2008.

Andriy Volkov
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No, VS 2008 Multi Targeting option only support .NetFramework 3.5 , 3.0 , 2.0

so it has a Backward Compatability, So You have to Use VS 2010 for .netFramework 4.0

Nasser Hadjloo
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AS the people here already said, no.

But if you want to check out some of .net 4 features you could download the already aging Parallel Exetnsions CTP and try it out with Visual Studio 2008.

It not much...

ArielBH
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