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Visual Studio 2005
| Version of Visual Studio | |
 | |
 | |
| Version | 8.0 |
|---|---|
| Codename | Whidbey |
| Latest build | 8.0.50727.867 |
| Released | 2005-11-07 |
| Support end | 2016-04-12 |
Visual Studio 2005 (codenamed Whidbey) is the fifth major release of Visual Studio. It removed the ".NET" reference from its name while still being focused around .NET Framework and bringing built-in support for x64 applications (a feature that was also new to the Windows Server 2003 Platform SDK & DDK, which uses the same C/C++ compiler version of 14). MSBuild (Microsoft Build Engine) has been introduced as well. It also added support for the new, at the time, .NET Framework and Compact Framework 2.0.
The Technology Preview of Visual Studio 2005 was released on PDC '03. Initially, Visual Studio 2005 was supposed to be the development platform for Longhorn and WinFX, but once Longhorn slipped, VS2005 launched ahead of it, though updates added .NET Framework 3.0 support to VS2005 before VS2008 came out. In other words, VS2005 could easily be combined with the Longhorn SDK. This version of Visual Studio comes bundled by default with Microsoft Visual C++ version 14.xx.
This version dropped support for Windows NT 4.0. It is also the last version of Visual Studio to support Windows 2000 and the RTM version of Windows Server 2003.
This version also introduces the Express editions, which were free to download, but ultimately replaced with the Community edition.
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