Will Microsoft's forthcoming Vista OS support legacy applications written in VB6 (Visual Basic 6)? Microsoft plans to answer that question in detail about a month from now, a timeframe that happens to coincide with the one-year anniversary of a petition from developers asking for better support of the traditional VB environment during the emerging .NET era.

Microsoft is currently readying a white paper about VB6 support in the next edition of Windows, disclosed Jay Roxe, Microsoft's lead product manager for Visual Studio, in an interview with DevSource.

But for now, Roxe is willing to say that when Vista goes out the door, Microsoft will extend mainstream support for the VB6 runtime — already being supplied through the end of the Windows XP lifecycle — by another six or seven years, through the end of the Vista lifecycle.

The same won't be true, however, for the VB6 development environment, which left mainstream support for extended support in mid-2005.

Roxe also told DevSource that most — but not necessarily all — VB6 applications will be operable on Vista.

"All of Microsoft's [VB6] components will work on Vista, although I can't speak for [the components of] third-party vendors. We'll detail all of this in a white paper [to be released] about a month from now," according to Roxe.

Roxe maintained that Microsoft's moves in Vista will help to resolve some of the issues raised by developers who are disenchanted over the company's recent treatment of VB6.

Also according to Roxe, Microsoft addressed some other issues by adding migration tools in VS 2005 that go well beyond the Migration Wizard of VS.NET 2002/3. "There are really two sets of issues [around VB6]. Some of these are related to support, and some to migration," he said.