Will installing Visual Studio 2010 side by side with VS2008 cause problems?
It is always possible that side-by-side installation issues exist, and you should have the appropriate safeguards in place (e.g. backup, use a VM, etc.).
In my personal experience, it has worked just fine. For my Tech Ed presentation, I rebuilt my laptop with Visual Studio 2005, 2008 and 2010 all installed side-by-side on Windows 7 x64. I didn't experience any problems.
The VS team has chimed in on this issue here. From the post:
"Q: Is it ‘safe’ to install VS 2010 Beta1 on my machine?
A: Yes! We’ve tested side-by-side scenarios, so installing the beta on a machine with VS 2008 installed is fine. The beta also supports uninstall and should leave VS 2008 and your machine in working order afterward. You can install VS 2010 Beta1 on a VPC if you prefer, though you will notice slower performance than if you run VS on your local machine. And please remember that however you install, this is pre-release software. The VS 2010 Beta1 readme documents major known issues, but it’s not guaranteed to be an exhaustive list."
On my machine I have installed:
- Visual Studio 2003
- Visual Studio 2005
- Visual Studio 2008
- Visual Studio 2010
and it works like a charm
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It's unlikely to cause problems as VS 2010 is primarily designed for developing with the .NET 4.0 framework (although multi-targeting is implemented, like it was in VS 2008, just in a better manner).
I (and no one I work with) ever had a problem with VS 2005 & VS 2008 installed side-by-side. In fact, it was strongly encouraged as we had legacy projects which were built in VS 2005 and although the upgrade to VS 2008 was minor (if staying with the .NET 2.0 framework for the projects) it was safer to not risk it.
If you're really concerned about conflicts or potential issues using beta software may not be for you. If you do want to try it and still have reservations I'd suggest that you do use a separate VM with VS 2010 on it.
I myself will be installing it side-by-side with VS 2008 on Vista (after backing up my VM) so if there are any problems I'll edit this post and report them.