Visual Studio 2010 RTM and the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP

Today, Microsoft officially released Visual Studio 2010 in Las Vegas.  Visual Studio 2010 is an incredible development environment for Windows Phone 7, and we want to make sure everyone can keep building their awesome Windows Phone applications.

With that in mind, we need to highlight that the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP (WPDT CTP) released last month is not compatible with the retail (RTM) release of Visual Studio 2010.

If you install the retail (RTM) release of Visual Studio 2010 on the same machine on which you already have the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP, you will be unable to build your Windows Phone projects.  Further, while the Windows Phone project type will continue to appear in the File/New dialog, you will not be able to build Windows Phone 7 applications.

The WPDT CTP was based on the Visual Studio 2010 release candidate (RC), and the updates made to Visual Studio between RC and the final RTM release causes incompatibilities with WPDT CTP.  We are working to update the WPDT CTP to support the retail release of Visual Studio 2010.  We will have this update available within a few weeks. If you would like to be notified when we have the update available, please visit this page to let us know.

So what can you do in the meantime?  To use the retail version of Visual Studio 2010 while retaining the ability to use the WPDT CTP, you can

• Install Visual Studio 2010 to a VPC image
• Install Visual Studio 2010  on another machine

Specific Notes:

• Installing the WPDT CTP to a VPC image is not supported.
• The installer for WPDT CTP will prevent you from installing on a machine on which you have already installed the RTM version Visual Studio 2010.
• Installing retail Visual Studio 2010 on a machine with the WPDT CTP already installed will result in a successful install of Visual Studio 2010, however, creating or opening Windows Phone Developer Tools Projects will not work.

We are working hard on an update which will allow the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP to work with the retail release of Visual Studio 2010. Please stay tuned, but expect something in a few weeks.