VS 2008 & 2010 - Virtual Machine Images

If you’re looking for a set of virtual machines for testing Visual Studio 2008 or 2010 and/or Team Foundation Server 2008 or 2010, then you’re in luck!  Brian Randell has just posted about a new set of virtual machine images ready for downloading.

For the 2008 images, the new expiration date is January 31st, 2011.  The 2010 images expire much earlier due to the nature of the beta products – April 9th, 2010.  However, by that time, it’s hoped that the final release of the 2010 products will be out, or if not (because of the delayed launch), then at least a new release candidate should be available by that time.

There are a total of seven images – four 2008 images and three 2010 images.

Read the full post for details.

Final TFS 2010 Beta 2 Patch Available

As of today, the final TFS 2010 Beta 2 patch is being made available.  The list of fixes include:

• If, in the connect dialog, the URL with “/tfs” fails to connect, fails back to base URL (minus “/tfs”).
• Removed an extraneous error that occurred when connecting to a CodePlex with the 2010 Team Explorer.
• Fixed an error that affected connecting to TFS using HTTPS over the Internet from behind an ISA proxy that requires authentication. (This affected people connecting to CodePlex over the Internet.)
• Improved performance when using Crtl-A to select multiple Labels.

You can download the patch from here or here (note: the second link is still in the process of being published so it may not be active for a few hours).

(read this announcement on Brian Harry’s blog)

As announced a few days ago, the originally planned launch date for Visual Studio 2010 has been pushed back several weeks so there are now plans to publish an interim release candidate (RC).  The RC is currently scheduled for release during February, 2010 so you shouldn’t have to wait too long between today’s patch release and the next publicly available release.

Visual Studio 2010 Launch Pushed Back

A couple of months ago it was announced that Visual Studio 2010 would launch on March 22, 2010.  Today, Microsoft announced that, due to extensive feedback (e.g. regarding performance issues, etc.), the official launch will be pushed back a few weeks.

Because of the extended beta period, Microsoft will be providing a Release Candidate, currently scheduled for February, 2010, with a broad “Go Live” license.

I believe this is a great move on Microsoft’s part as it will give them a little more time to “get it right” and will also provide the public with another “Go Live” version for testing and development purposes prior to the official launch.  So, now you won’t have to wait until the end of March next year to get an updated version of VS 2010 but you will have to wait a little longer to get the final (hopefully better) product – not a bad trade-off.

Read more about it here and here.

TFS 2010 Beta 2 Power Tools Released

For anyone that’s been using Team Foundation Server for any amount of time, odds are you’ve also been making use of the Team Foundation Server Power Tools (if not, then they’re well worth a look).  If you have been taking advantage of Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2’s “Go Live” license then you’ve had to make due without the enhanced functionality provided by the TFS Power Tools.  That is, until now.

The Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2 Power Tools have been released and are now available for download.  Here are the links:

• Team Foundation Power Tools
• TFS MSSCCI Provider

Brian Harry has a great post on the various details here.

Note: this is a pre-release version of the TFS 2010 Power Tools.  The final version will be released around the same time as Visual Studio 2010 (March 22, 2010).

Presentation Slides

Today concludes my run of talks (at least for the next few weeks :-) that I’ve been giving over the past few weeks so I thought I’d post the PowerPoint decks in case anyone might find some use from them.  With that said…

• An Introduction to Silverlight 3 – presented at the Farm Credit Services of America internal User Group.
• VSTS – What’s in it for me? – presented at the Omaha Team System User Group,  Dubuque, IA .NET User Group, and Tulsa TechFest.
• Team Foundation Build 2008 – Automating the Build Process – presented at Tulsa TechFest.
• Using Team Foundation Build 2008 in the Real World – presented at Tulsa TechFest and the Tyson Developer Conference.
• Keeping Up with C# – presented at the Tyson Developer Conference.

Team Foundation Sidekicks Updated (v2.4)

First of all, if you are using Team Foundation Server and don’t currently make use of the Team Foundation Sidekicks (from Attrice Corporation), you should.  That said, Attrice has released an update (v2.4) to their current set of Team Foundation Sidekicks.

This update resolves a few issues with the previous release as well as one new feature - “Users View Sidekick”, which offers the following features:

• Display all users in Valid Users group on TFS server
• Search users list by user name or display name

This is the last planned release that will support TFS 2005/2008.  All future enhancements will target TFS 2010 with a beta (for VS 2010) possibly available by the end of the year.

For more information:

• http://www.attrice.info/blog/2009/11/12/team-foundation-sidekicks-2-4-release/
• http://www.attrice.info/cm/tfs/index.htm

Cross Platform Support for TFS Gets Better

Yesterday, Microsoft announced they will be purchasing the Teamprise-related assets of SourceGear.  The Teamprise tools allows software developers to take advantage of various features of Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server (e.g. work item tracking, automated builds, and reporting features) from other environments such as Macintosh- and Linux/Unix-based systems.  There is also an Eclipse plug-in that provides functionality almost identical to that of the Team Explorer client that integrates with Visual Studio.

Having this technology more accessible (e.g. via Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate) will no doubt go a long way in helping development teams that work across multiple platforms (e.g. .NET, Java, etc.) work and plan with an integrated set of ALM tools.  Having those tools integrated into their development environment of choice – Visual Studio or Eclipse, is the icing on the cake.

The Teamprise technology will be available with Visual Studio 2010 and can be acquired in one of several ways:

• Purchased separately with one TFS CAL (for approximately $799).
• Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN will include the Teamprise technology.
• Free upgrade to the Microsoft branded product to all current Teamprise owners once released.

Support will continue to be offered by Teamprise until the Microsoft branded product is released, at which time, Microsoft will take over support.

More Information:

• Press Release
• http://www.microsoft.com/pathways/teamprise/
• http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2009/11/09/microsoft-has-acquired-the-teamprise-client-suite.aspx
• http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=4473

Visual Studio 2010 “Live” Sessions

Starting today (November 3rd, 2010), a series of Microsoft Office Live Meeting sessions will be hosted presenting on various features of Visual Studio 2010.  Whether you’ve already spent a lot of time with the Visual Studio 2010 betas or you’re new to the product, these sessions will be a great source of information.

• Nov 3rd 10:00-11:00AM -Getting Started with IntelliTrace (formerly the “Historical Debugger”) by Habib Heydarian and Justin Marks
• Nov 4th 10:00-11:00AM - Getting Started with SharePoint Development in Visual Studio 2010 by Boris Scholl
• Nov 5th 9:00am-10:00am - A Lap Around Visual Basic in Visual Studio 2010 by Lisa Feigenbaum
• Nov 5th 10:00am-11:00am - Getting Started with Managed Extensibility Framework by Glen Block
• Nov 6th 10:00-11:00AM - Getting started with Design and Discovery Tools (Architecture) by Mark Groves

All times listed are PST and all sessions will use the same LiveMeeting connection information as follows:

LiveMeeting:	https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/0000000379_103/join?id=76P755&role=attend&pw=p%2C%2Fzk2K%7CM
Conf call:	Toll Free (US Only): 866-500-6738
Toll:	203-480-8000
Participant code:	#198585

If you do not already have the Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007 client installed, you can save yourself a little time by installing it now (rather than waiting for the meeting to start).

Visual Studio 2010 – Links for Getting Started

If you are venturing to try out the latest Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 release then you may be looking for as much information regarding this release as you can.  There is too much information available to condense into a single post so here are a few links to help get you started:

Links & Downloads

• Visual Studio Home – this is the official Visual Studio home page.  You will be able to view information specific to each SKU, as well as download the latest beta, once the site is updated (hopefully tomorrow).
• Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 can be downloaded from the MSDN Subscribers download site.  General availability is expected to start on Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 on the Microsoft Downloads site.
• Team Foundation Installation Guide for Visual Studio Team System 2010 – use this link to download the CHM file for the TFS installation guide (beta 1 and 2 guides are currently available).  This guide is also included in the Team Foundation Server 2010 download (in the root folder).
• Compare the various Visual Studio 2010 SKUs here.

Documentation

If you’re looking for documentation for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2, then you can find (hopefully) everything you need on the MSDN site.  Click here for the Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 documentation.

Client Compatibility

If you’re going to be running Visual Studio 2010 side-by-side with older clients and/or Team Foundation Servers (e.g. 2005 and/or 2008) then there are some compatibility issues that you will need to take into account.  This blog post covers these in great detail.

Licensing

Along with the Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 announcement came details regarding the new SKUs that will be available.  Brian Harry has posted some highlights regarding these changes.  Buck Hodges has also posted a few details here.

Learning More

Here are some links to miscellaneous posts and videos regarding some of the new Visual Studio 2010 features:

• Team Foundation Server 2010 Key Concepts
• TFS 2010 for SourceSafe Users
• TFS 2010 Project Management
• TFS 2010 Work Item Tracking
• TFS 2010 Admin, Operations & Setup Improvements
• Where is TFS Basic?
• Setting up Offline help/Docs in Visual Studio 2010 Beta2
• VS 2010 Beta 2 Debugger In-Depth First Look
• VS 2010 Beta 2 IntelliTrace In-Depth First Look
• VS 2010 Beta 2 Code Analysis In-Depth First Look
• VS 2010 Beta 2 Sampling and Instrumentation Profiling In Depth First Look
• VS 2010 Beta 2 Concurrency Resource Profiling In Depth First Look
• Downloading and Installing Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 – a Channel 9 video.

BLOGs to Watch

• Brian Harry
• Buck Hodges
• Willy-Peter Schaub
• S. Somasegar
• Charles Sterling

Reporting Bugs

If you happen to discover any issues (i.e. bugs) with Visual Studio, please report them on Microsoft Connect.  This is the site where you can search for existing issues, create new issues, and follow them as they move through Microsoft’s development life cycle.

Visual Studio 2010 – Beta 2 Released

Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2010 – Beta 2 is now available for download on the MSDN subscribers download site.  This is a milestone release for Microsoft for several reasons:

• This release (Visual Studio 2010 – Beta 2) is generally considered to be feature complete (barring any loud feedback concerning some missing feature that just can’t be left out)
• It comes with a “Go-Live” license.  This means that you can use Visual Studio 2010 and/or Team Foundation Server 2010 to produce production systems and the upgrade to the RTM version will be supported.
• The Visual Studio 2010 SKUs have been modified to (hopefully) reduce confusion – specifically, the confusion between Visual Studio and “Team System”.  The moniker “Team System” is no longer used with Visual Studio although the ALM tools are still very much part of Visual Studio.  In fact, all of the Visual Studio 2010 SKUs that include and MSDN subscription include a full Team Foundation Server (TFS) license for production use as well as one CAL.  This is an exciting change because it makes TFS a much more affordable solution.

The official list of Visual Studio 2010 SKUs include:

• Microsoft^® Visual Studio^® 2010 Professional
• Microsoft^® Visual Studio^® 2010 Professional with MSDN
• Microsoft^® Visual Studio^® 2010 Premium with MSDN
• Microsoft^® Visual Studio^® 2010 Ultimate with MSDN
• Microsoft^® Visual Studio^® Test Elements 2010 with MSDN
• Microsoft^® Visual Studio^® Team Foundation Server 2010
• Microsoft^® Visual Studio^® Team Lab Management 2010
• Microsoft^® Visual Studio^® Load Test Virtual User Pack 2010

The “Express” editions are not included in the above list as they have not changed.

Also, you will be seeing the “Ultimate Offer” promotion from Microsoft that will bump your MSDN subscription up to the next level based on your current MSDN subscription status at the time Visual Studio 2010 is launched (which is scheduled for March 22nd, 2010).  So, if you currently have an MSDN subscription, make sure you check out the details of this offer (details in a later post) prior to the launch date.

There are a ton of other details regarding this release that are too numerous to list right now (e.g. new MSDN subscription benefits as well).  Expect to see (lots) of posts regarding the changes in Visual Studio 2010 in the near future.

For now, if you are running Visual Studio Team System (2005 or 2008) you may want to download the new beta and try out the new features.  In fact, you can even use it for your production development if you like.

If you happen to discover any issues (i.e. bugs) with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2, please report them on Microsoft Connect.  This is the site where you can search for existing issues, create new issues, and follow them as they move through Microsoft’s development life cycle.

For further information, check out these links:

• Microsoft names Visual Studio 2010 dates
• Testers to get Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 this week; final by March 2010
• Brian Harry’s BLOG
• Willy-Peter Schaub’s BLOG