Team is Going from XP32 to XP64 for .NET Development - Any Gotchas?

Question

My team is getting new XP64 workstations. We\'ve been using XP32 up until now. Most of our work is done in managed C#/VS2008/.net 3.5 and SQL Server 2005. However we do have

Answer 1

TFS does not support 64 bits (TFS Server, not sure for team explorer)

Answer 2

It depends.

Have you used P/Invoke in your code?

Have you used unmanaged code and marshalled data to and from it? If so then you will have to go through this code with a fine tooth comb :(.

However if your code is pure C# which hasn't used P/Invoke then the only difference you should see is a slight performance increase and better memory performance :).

You may however run into gremlins finding drivers for your development machines.

If you have some 32bit code then perhaps you could create a WCF interface to it (named pipes are very, very fast) and use that to talk to a 32bit service. I know that you can't have 32bit code in a 64bit process, but I think you can open a pipe to a 32bit process, unless I have that wrong. You could always use TCP/IP in that case. Might save you from rewriting critical code in your system and allow you to use WOW64 or a VM to deal with a migration issue.

Answer 3

• Mixed-Mode debugging is an issue if you use any C++ and C# with 64-bit applications.
• There are still many development tools that don't support running on Windows x64 or don't support working with 64-bit binaries. Take for instance, Compuware DevPartner. It currently only supports 32-bit application development, but the application itself will run on 64-bit Windows.

Answer 4

We ran into 2 different types of problem:

1. We had a 3rd party component that wrappered a native 32-bit dll. The vendor did not offer a 64-bit version, so we had to target 32-bit development.

2. A few driver problems. XP-64 hadn't caught on a whole lot (has it now?) when we tried it. The problems weren't related to development, but we had some trouble with printer drivers, network drivers, etc). In vista, they changed the driver model, so there may be more 64-bit drivers out there now, but I don't know whether they will be backwards compatible with XP.

Answer 5

hope this help

Registering COM 32 bit DLL for asp 64 bit call

Many links about convention 32-64 bits

General FAQs About 64-bit Windows

64-bit System Design

see this tips too Biggest performance improvement you’ve had with the smallest change?

more great blog tips : Back to Basics: 32-bit and 64-bit confusion around x86 and x64 and the .NET Framework and CLR

Windows Application Quality Cookbook from Microsoft

DevReadiness.org
This site is dedicated to assisting the Windows ISV ecosystem develop high quality applications for new versions of the platform. Windows 7 was recently announced at the PDC 2008 conference, a link to the new app readiness "cookbook" is provided on the right

The Microsoft.com OPS guys have blogged about their migration to x64 and how it all works.
Running Microsoft.com on 64 Bit…The Dependencies, The Goodness, the Gotcha’s

Answer 6

You won't be able to talk to MS Access databases from .NET x64, because there are no x64 Jet drivers.

I would consider this an excellent reason to move to x64.