Porting to .Net

[kiran.inbng]

Hi All,

We have a product which is completely programmed using vc6,now there is
a requirement from the client asking for providing .net compilation
support to the existing codebase.

We have to give an estimation for completing the above requirement.Any
help on what all things to be considered,issues etc on providing
compilation support will be very helpful.

Thanks in advance,
kiran

[Light]

I'm not sure I understand your question. You should look and see if
there is a business incentive to move to .NET. Just like it doesn't
make sense to use VC 6 for most products and some foolish people were
doing that even a couple years ago then it also doesn't make sense to
port to .NET just for the sake of doing it.

Most people use Winforms because it is very capable, powerful, and
productive. You will probably have to recode the entire product to take
advantage of Winforms unless you really designed it well.

You might look and see if it would be better suited as a web
application. C# is better suited for .NET development as well so even
if you seperated the logic then you will have to consider whether to
leave business logic in C++ and interface to C# or upgrade the entire
product.

If client simply wants to be able to interface to your code then you
could write a wrapper for it but I wouldn't want that unless it was for
system level stuff.
Curtis
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[kiran.inbng]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.The point is that the future development will be
done using dot net.We are not porting the entire existing
application(not rewriting the code again).What we want is to provide
compilation support for existing code in .Net.

Thanks,
kiran

[kiran.inbng]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.The point is that the future development will be
done using dot net.We are not porting the entire existing
application(not rewriting the code again).What we want is to provide
compilation support for existing code in .Net.

Thanks,
kiran

[Eduard Ralph]

Hi,

depending on how the original code is written, it might or might not
work. If you have a monolithic application in VB6 and have the idea to
just make .NET compileable, you might as well scratch the idea. Unlike
the move from VB5 to VB6, so much has fundamentally changed that that
is a pretty ugly thing to do and you'll always be fighting to keep it
that way. This view is based on what I saw from C++, so it might not be
that ugly.
My suggestion would rather be to decide to make the switch to a certain
time and then move all. Of course better would be if you have made
clear, distinct Components of it. Then you can move them one by one and
don't have to do all at once.
The issue is different in case you have written most of it COM
Components. Things get pretty easy then because .NET can create COM
Components and use native COM componens. In essence you can move each
COM Component at your leasure and aren't forced to make the one big
cut. That would also be my suggestion in case you are looking into how
to expand your development into the .NET field.
And of course that is one big issue the previous poster mentioned:
Because Winforms is the new way to make a GUI in .NET all the things
you have in VB6 are an issue. I think you might be able to get it to
compile but I don't think it will be a lot of fun.

Greets,
Eduard Ralph