Referencing VB 2005 dll in VB 2003

[lucbrunet]

Hi everyone,

is there any way I can reference a dll made with VB 2005 in a VB 2003 project? Everytime I try I get the error that it is not a valid assembly or COM component. I always figured that as long as the proper versions of the framework was installed, a dll was a dll. It seems I'm wrong.

Anyway, does anyone know of a way I could get around this?

Thanks,

Luc

[pclement]

This shouldn't be an issue. How are you adding the assembly to your project?

[lucbrunet]

I'm just adding a reference.

Anyway I found this: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/Sho...28853&SiteID=1

it seems there's not much that can be done. Please let me know if you know of a way around this.

[pclement]

Well I was thinking you could use the component from your app but I forgot that the development environment is hard-wired to a specific framework version, and of course you can't run a 2.0 assembly under a prior version of the framework.

I haven't tried it but I'm speculating that this would work if you ran your app under version 2.0 of the .NET Framework.

[lucbrunet]

Do you mean migrate the code to VB 2005? Or is there a way I can force the app to run with the 2.0 version of the framework?

[pclement]

You can force the app to load and run under the 2.0 framework.

Side-by-Side Execution of the .NET Framework

How to: Use an Application Configuration File to Target a .NET Framework Version

Of course you would want to make certain that your app doesn't encounter any of the breaking changes that occured between versions of the framework.