Is there any VB6 to C# migration tool? [closed]

Answer 1

One question to ask yourself is, how important is it to have C# rather than VB.NET? If you're converting a large application, perhaps you should just upgrade to VB.NET, which will be cheaper.

There are some features in VB6 with no exact equivalent in C# (the error handling, late binding etc). Ask yourself why it's worth the manual effort to convert those, when you could go to VB.NET which does support them.

And if you don't believe me (and no-one's voted for my answer, sob sob!) maybe you'll believe Francesco Balena and Dan Appleman (in a book Moving to VB.NET) who agree with me.

Answer 2

VisualStudio offers (or at least offered) a wizard to do a conversion from VB6 to VB.NET (which could then be converted to C# with a bit of work, possibly helped by #develop's VB.NET <-> C# converter), but when last I used it, for anything non-trivial there was a lot of manual work needing to be done so I suspect you're probably better rewriting or porting by hand if this is a large and/or important application.

Answer 3

Artinsoft (Now renamed to Mobilize.Net) does just this, especifically the Visual Basic Upgrade Companion.

However, even after using the VBUC there's still some parts that of the system that needs to be migrated/proofed by hand. But it's usually a much smaller set of the original problem. And some of the migration issues have been resolved thanks to experience with past migrations.

Artinsoft is the same company that built the wizard that ships with Visual Studio, mentioned in theraccoonbear's post. However, if I'm not mistake the wizard only migrates VB6 to VB.Net.

Full disclosure: I work for Artinsoft

Answer 4

The short answer is that VB6 and VB.NET (and consequently C#) are separate language but related languages. There are many subtle (Integer being Int32 instead of Int16) and gross differences (graphics, form, and printing engines) between the two platforms. You need to treat this as if you are converting to a completely different platform.

Answer 5

Open your project with a new version of Visual Studio, convert your code to VB.Net and then download .Net Reflector to help you with the C# transformation.

Good luck!

Answer 6

It might come across as a little bit cheeky but your brain might be the best tool to use. Could be worth the re-write.

Maybe you don't need to porting it. Could the VB6 be turned into a COM component? Port to COM, call from C#, home in time for Judge Judy.