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Thanks to everybody (more than 100 of you!) who joined me yesterday for What's New in Visual Studio 2010. I hope you saw a lot of useful and exciting features coming soon to a Visual Studio near you. There were a couple of questions asked that I didn't have the answer for at the time. I sent an email and got the answers, so here they are:
Q: I have VS 2008 Pro. Our IT has TFS server. I just need to link to IT TFS server from my licensed Visual Studio. I noticed I can download Team Explorer from Microsoft’s web site. But do I need to pay a license to get Team Explorer to connect to TFS server?
A: Yes. Visual Studio 2008 users are required to purchase a Client Access License for TFS.
Q: I was wondering if with VS 2010 we would have a problem running our project's Team Builds in Team Server Foundation 2008? We seemed to encounter this problem when we moved from VS 2005 to VS 2008 but we still kept TFS 2005.
A: The Build definitions changed from TFS 2005 to TFS 2008. You can continue triggering builds from an older version, even with a newer client (i.e. build on check-in), but a newer client cannot edit the builds of an older TFS. This will be true with TFS 2010 as well as TFS 2010 uses Windows Workflow for build automation.
Let me know if you have additional questions.
Robert
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MSDN subscribers can now download Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/dd582936.aspx). It will be available for everyone on October 21.
Microsoft also announced the packaging for Visual Studio. Looks like the Standard edition is gone. In addition to the Express versions, there will be Professional, Premium and Ultimate versions. See http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010/default.mspx for details on what is in each version. Some highlights:
- The SharePoint tools are in Pro.
- Team Foundation Server is included in Pro. This is the Team Foundation Server Basic Edition I mentioned in my last blog.
- Pro continues to have unit testing. Premium adds Code Coverage, Test Impact Analysis and Coded UI Test. Ultimate adds Web Performand and Load Testing.
- The tools in VS Team System Database Edition (also known as Data Dude) are in Premium.
- To get the Historical Debugger, you need Ultimate.
Next week I am doing a What's New in VS 2010 Live Learning event. I will use Beta 2, so if you want to see it, come join me Wednesday, Oct 28 at 11 AM CST.
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Silverlight
At VSLive Orlando last week I went to a couple of Silverlight sessions and talked with several folks at lunch. The main takeaway I got was that Silverlight is clearly the next big thing. After seeing an Intro to Silverlight session, people were asking "Why would I ever use ASP.NET when I can use Silverlight"? You get most of the richness of a client app (except it runs in a sandbox, so no printing or being able to talk to the file system, maybe in future releases?) and your app runs as a browser plug-in, so deployment is a no-brainer. The XAML in Silverlight is a subset of the XAML in WPF, so if you learn one XAML in one you know it in the other. Once caveat: the Silverlight tooling in VS 2008 is not up to par at the moment. For example, in the current release you can't drag controls from the Toolbox onto the designer. You have to write XAML or drags the controls into your XAML. Hopefully, a newer version of the VS 2008 tools will come out with better designer support. And I am sure that VS 2010 will not have this issue.
Takeaway: The time to jump on the Silverlight train is now. And not just if you are a Web developer.
Team Foundation Server Basic Edition
Matt Carter of Microsoft gave a keynote at VSLive. His focus was Visual Studio 2010. The 3 main themes were Creativity unleashed, Simplicity through integration and Quality code ensured. Lots of vision about how VS 2010 would make it easier to built better applications and raise the chances your projects will be successful. Of course, his demos all showed stuff in Team Suite (or whatever the big version will be called next time). How many of us have Team Suite? I do because I have an MSDN Team Suite subscription. However, when we write courseware, we only include things that are in VS Professional, because we can assume everyone has that.
So how is a developer with Pro supposed to take advantage of the project testing and management tooling in Visual Studio? VS 2008 added unit testing. What's coming in VS 2010 for the masses? Matt answered that by announcing Team Foundation Server Basic Installation. This is for individual developers and small teams. Install and configuration will be fast and easy. And you can install it on client machines. He did not specifically mention packaging or pricing, but I'm guessing widespread and cheap. It would likely ship as part of VS Professional and may be available more widely.
Takeaway: In VS 2008, you have to buy Visual Studio Big Daddy Edition to get anything more than unit testing. In VS 2010, Microsoft wants all VS developers to have more tools to help them write better code. I like that.
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Back in July I wrote about how Visual Studio 2008 SP1 wouldn't install because I didn't install C++. Since that time, I repaved that machine and installed Windows 7. I of course installed VS 2008 SP1 the same day I installed VS 2008 and all was well. The SP1 install had been updated since July to not fail just becuase you didn't install C++.
About a week and a half ago, I was working on a project to convert the C# code in Eric Carter's VSTO 2007 book to VB. One of the code listings uses Microsoft.Office.Tools.Excel.Extension and when I typed the dot after Excel, there was no listing for Extension. The book said it was installed in SP1, but I couldn't find it. I Binged it and saw that others had run into the same thing. There was no official explanation, but the advice was basically maybe your SP1 didn't install correctly so reinstall VS 2008. That seemed a bit extreme, especially since I had rebuilt the machine not much more than a month ago. I didn't really feel like spending more time on this, so I punted and moved on in the book.
In the meantime, I decided to install the Silverlight 3 tools on my computer. That install failed too, telling me I needed VS 2008 SP1. It told me I needed a specific version of SP1, yet the About box in Visual Studio listed that version. Once again, I Binged this and found essentially the same advice. Your SP1 isn't installed correctly.
So I downloaded SP1 from MSDN, even though Windows Update said it was installed, and reinstalled it. Bingo. Both issues went away. I now had Microsoft.Office.Tools.Excel.Extension and the Silverlight tools installed just fine. Why did my original install of the updated SP1 not work? Who knows. All I know is a reinstall fixed everything. So you just might want to reinstall it to be sure.
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I'm wearing long sleeves. We turned the heat on. And our TV shows are back on. That can mean only one thing. Fall is here. And with fall comes fall speaking season. I am making three speaking trips this month.
I will be in Orlando for VSLive October 5-7 (aka next week). I am giving three talks:
- Building SharePoint Workflows with Visual Studio
- Working with the Office 2007 Open XML File Formats
- What's New in Visual Studio 2010
I will be in Bellingham, WA on October 14 speaking at the Bellingham .NET user group. The topic is yet to be decided.
I will be in Arnhem, Netherlands for the SDN Conference on October 19-20. I am giving three talks:
- An Introduction to Windows Communication Foundation
- WCF and Worklow Foundation: Two Great Technologies That Go Well Together
- Windows Communication Foundation Security Fundamentals
If you are at any of these events, please come by and say hello. I always enjoy meeting customers.