Visual Studio, .NET Framework, and language versions

A Technical Blog article. View original blog here.[^]

Every so often, a question comes up about how Visual Studio, the .NET Framework, and a .NET programming language relate to each other. Mostly, these questions have to do with versions. The reality is that these are actually three different “products” that are versioned independently of each other but are related.

Looking at how Visual Studio, the .NET Framework version, and the CLR versions relate to each other results in the following:

Visual Studio	CLR	.NET Framework
Visual Studio .NET (Ranier)	1.0.3705	1.0
Visual Studio 2003 (Everett)	1.1.4322	1.1
Visual Studio 2005 (Whidbey)	2.0.50727	2.0
Visual Studio 2005 with .NET 3.0 Extensions	2.0.50727	2.0, 3.0
Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas)	2.0.50727	2.0 SP1, 3.0 SP1, 3.5
Visual Studio 2008 SP1	2.0.50727	2.0 SP2, 3.0 SP2, 3.5 SP1
Visual Studio 2010 (Hawaii)	4.0.30319	4.0

The actual Visual Studio version numbers are:

Product Name	Version	Ship Date
Visual Studio .NET	7.0.????	02/2002
Visual Studio .NET 2002 SP1	7.0.????
Visual Studio 2003	7.1.????	04/2003
Visual Studio 2003 SP1	7.1.6030	09/13/2006
Visual Studio 2005	8.0.5072
Visual Studio 2005 SP1		12/14/2006
Visual Studio 2008	9.0.21022.8	11/19/2007
Visual Studio 2008 SP1	9.0.30729.1
Visual Studio 2010	10.0.30319.1	04/12/2010

(For those entries that are missing information, it simply means that I didn't already know it and/or couldn't easily find it online.)

So far, everything seems fairly reasonable and isn't terribly difficult to keep coordinated. However, when you start trying to find language versions and how those relate to .NET Framework, CLR, or Visual Studio releases, it becomes more difficult.

The breakdown for the programming languages that are part of Visual Studio are:

Framework	CLR	Language
		C#	VB	F#
1.0	1.0.3705	1.0	7.0	-
1.1	1.1.4322	1.1	7.1	-
2.0	2.0.50727	2.0	8.0	-
3.0	2.0.50727	2.0	8.0	-
3.5	2.0.50727	3.0	9.0	-
4.0	4.0.30319	4.0	10.0	2.0

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

About the Author

Scott Dorman

Software Developer (Senior)

United States

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Scott is a C# MVP and author who has been involved with computers in one way or another for as long as he can remember, but started professionally in 1993. He has worked at Fortune 500 companies and privately held start-ups focused on IT consulting where he gained experience in embedded systems design and software development to systems administration and database programming, and everything in between.

After spending 6 years as a systems administrator, Scott started developing eCommerce store fronts. Since 2001, he has worked on many different projects using .NET and C#. Although his primary focus right now is commercial software applications, he prefers building infrastructure components, reusable shared libraries and helping companies define, develop and automate process standards and guidelines.

Scott runs a software architecture-focused user group, speaks extensively, and contributes regularly to online communities such as The Code Project and StackOverflow, and is the Community Manager and Senior Editor for DotNetKicks.

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