Targetting earlier .NET frameworks
Unfortunately, VS2005 and/or MSBuild is not going to allow us to build applications targetted at .NET 1.0 or 1.1 frameworks.
Why is this a big deal? Well, to most people it isn't frankly, but ISV's need to offer products that run on 1.0 because that's the framework that some customers use. The majority may run 1.1 now, but we cannot even support that with VS2005. We can build 2.0 applications or... wait, there is no alternative.
There are some hacks out there1, I admit. And just like you could make IIS run on XP Home I'm sure they will work, after a fashion. But they are not MS hacks. Does Microsoft care? Hard to say.
I do know that VS2005 Device Development tools offer the ability to target down-level versions of the device CLR (NETCF). Desktop developers do not get this functionality.
After reading everything I could get my hands on, I get the impression that MS will try to offer down-level support in future versions of VS, so Hawaii could target Orcas CLR. But it's unlikely that Orcas will target Everett.
My only remaining hope now is that the MSBuild team can at least offer us some support on the published hacks out there1 and help ISV's get out of VS2002 and into the latest and greatest.
1 Ok, here is the most useful looking link; to Robert McLaws work. I haven't even run this, so you're on your own for now.