In mid January, I installed Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2. The results where, well, quite honestly (sorry MS) but less than stellar. I was a bit jaded to even try the latest RC. BUT! After seeing a coworker do a presentation this week with the RC, he renewed my energy and I tried installing it again last night. Thanks SB for the confidence boost, here's a blow by blow review of what happened so you'll know what to expect from start to end (with a wart or two).
Preparations
Things first start off with googling for the download (sorry, I'm still using Google). You'll find this link on MSDN, Visual Stutio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Release Candidate. Down on the bottom left hand side you'll have a choice of Ultimate, Premium and Professional. Here's the link whick lists the differences between the different versions. If you're JUST interested in playing with Microsoft's new and improved (SSSSSIP, yup, that MS Koolaid is GRRRRREAT! LOL), just download the Professional one. Why? It's the smallest download cause it's got the least WITHOUT skipping anything with regards to the IDE. The other two (prem and ult) have TFS, Office, Dynamics, Expression Studio 3, Office Pro Plus 2010, Visio and Project in the download bundle. That's a lot of extra baggage JUST to play with the IDE. My advice, skip the temptation "to get the best and highest package" just for now and go with the Professional.
Prerequisites: one blank DVD inserted into your "CD tray." DOH! LOL! There are two tricks if you don't have this, read down for them.
Once you click the link, you'll have to download four files, one EXE and three RARs. Once downloaded, you've got everything on your box you'll need, no more downloads after this (well, except for updates after the install is done).
Ok, now what? Where's the typical MSI or setup.exe file? Well, we're not completely done yet. Thanks to CI and SB, they said you run the exe (yup, just double click that exe).
The exe is a self-extracting RAR program as well as the start of the DVD for Visual Studio 2010 RC Pro! Next you're going to tell it what directory to stick the resulting ISO file. Once you let it go, this is the progress you'll (hopefully see).
Very oddly though, after things were completed, I did get my first WTF moment.
BUT, the ISO file was there, so I have NO idea WTF happened there. Once you see the ISO file, if you're running Windows 7, right click the ISO file and then burn the DVD (oh ya, you'll need a blank DVD! LOL). If you're using Vista, I'm not 100% sure, but I'm hoping it's the same or similar thing you'll see. If you're in XP? hhhmmm you really should consider moving to Win7 man, sorry, but that's the truth.
After you select the Burn disc image, you'll see this progress.
IF, you don't have a spare DVD, there are two other options, but they BOTH come with warnings/caveats!
- You could mount the ISO using some type of mounting tool, however, this is not advised cause most likely you'll need to reboot DURING the install process (hey, don't shoot the messanger, I don't like it neither!) and since the setup starts up IMMEDIATELY after restarting, most likely you won't have a chance to remount the ISO in time. CI says there is ONE mounting tool out there which will automagically remount upon reboot, so that is probably the ONLY way this will work.
- Use some other tool to split open the ISO file into another directory. In other words, unarchive the unarchived files you just downloaded! DOH! Ya, seems weird I know, but SB did that and it worked AWESOME for him. And why wouldn't it? He just stuck the whole DVD contents into a directory and started to FLY through the install!
Finally Running Setup
Ok, now that you have your DVD burnt, you can NOW find the setup.exe file to run.
Yup, you guessed it, NOW you're installing Visual Studio 2010 RC!
Click the first link and you'll see this dlg flash up on the screen. Don't worry if you miss it (I restarted my install a number of times so you could see what that FLASHING dlg was so you don't have to restart yourself).
Next you'll get this setup loading progress.
Another marketing screen. Bang the Next button please thank you.
Arg, more legaleese.
Ok, now we're getting to the more interesting pieces, picking the type of installation.
I like to control my installations, especially when it comes to VS, so I picked the Custom setting. You can pick what-ever you want, but check check out on the following few screen caps what gets installed to see if you like what the defaults are. If not, then pick the custom one too.
After you picked what you want, you'll see the progress.
This goes along for a little bit of time, but the BIG difference between the RC and Beta 2 setup experience was/is since we have all the files we need locally already, there's no downloading from Microsoft and having your ISP throttle your connection speeds down to nearly nothing! Well, at least that's what happened to me. Since when does Visual Studio 2010 RC bits looks like I'm downloading The Matrix 1, 2, 3??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
It was at this point, I thought, "THIS IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!! NO REBOOT!" Then it happened. DOH! :< Spoke too soon.
WTF????????? Why do you need to that IN THE MIDDLE of doing my setup????!!!!!! What are you doing NEXT that is SOOOOOOO important you CRITICALLY NEED .NET 4.0?????????? WTF are you doing in the install that's SOOOOOOO complicated you can't do with .NET 2.0??????? Since when did the setup prgram get so complicated? AAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH Ya, a bit dramatic, but I had a hockey experience this week I'm still sour over, AND I just get PO'd when I'm asked to reboot in the MIDDLE of a setup program. Just queue up the reboot for AFTER the setup, I can live with that, and so can a BOAT load of other people too I think.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANYWAYS, once you reboot, and IF you're using a DVD or automatically mounted ISO, or an expanded directory, the setup thankfully picks up EXACTLY where it left off! THAT was cool. Once the progress is done, HOPEFULLY you'll see the next screen cap! Success = Awesome!
You can pick to install the documentation, but since this is a timed install (I didn't care too much about the docs). I'll wait until the real product to install that. Click on Finish and you're back to the starting screen. It's not a bad idea to check for updates. To my surprise, there WAS one last night, but it was for some VC++ distribution libraries.
Ok, we're done. Well, ya, sure, TECHNICALLY, but let's poke around a bit to see what exactly did we do, ok? The following is what you'll see on the Start menu. Notice, Visual Studio 2008 AND 2010 are both listed? They can BOTH live on the same box at the same time. Interesting!
When you goto a folder in Windows Explorer listing some code and solution files, what happens when you right mouse click on the SLN file? Notice the Microsoft Visual Studio Version Selector? That one will go into the SLN file and figure out if it's a VS2008 solution and open that up is required. If you don't have VS 2008, I doubt you'll see that context menu option.
Ok, so now what? Let's open up VS 2010 and see what we can see? Open up that solution you were looking at above (no, not mine yours! LOL).
Since I have a previous version of VS, it picked that up and is giving me the options to bring my settings into VS 2010, well, most of the at least. It does a pretty good job of it. Once you pick your default environment settings and the start button, VS 2010 will do a bit of thinking before popping up with your solution.
THERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We're done! Yup, that's it! Ok, ok, so this blog was long, long winded, drawn out, blow by blow, screen by screen, but hey, at least there's NO (or shouldn't be) any surprises now!
First Impressions
Now that you have VS 2010 installed, now what? Well, you start to use it! Rememeber up above, I said there were some warts? HMPH! Well, the first thing I tried, Edit and Continue, well, doesn't work on x64 machines! GGGRRRRRRRR I thought 64-bit boxes were superior to their x86 brethrin?! Apparently NOT! There are apparently LOTS of reasons why this isn't supported, but it doesn't matter, it should JUST work man! This wasn't working in the Beta 2 and I guess I naively HOPED this would be working come release time, but nope.
The easiest way to get this to work on WinForms apps only (doesn't work with web apps, gggrrrrrr) is to build SPECIFICALLY for the x86. HHHMMM Sounds like a cludge to me boys! IF you decide to do this (and you're on your own if you make this a regular habit), don't forget to change it back to the Any CPU option before you check anything in. You don't want to be responsible for your president yelling at your boss for "your application performing less than optimally" because you explicitly build the 32-bit version!
When I played with the Beta 2, I noticed some weird font rendering with tooltips, MS seems to have fixed that with the RC.
Another wart I saw was the (IMHO) over emphasis of TSF! :< I use somethign else (COUGH SVN COUGH). Excuse, sorry, I didn't make that call, somebody much higher up the food chain (aka pay scale, org chart, etc) made that decision a LOOOOOONG time ago. We also use another bug tracking system. I don't enjoy having TFS shoved down my throat like what MS is trying to with VS 2010.
If you don't know what I mean, then you're lucky to be spared the deluge of all the TFS marketing masked as NEW AND IMPROVED VS 2010 Tips'n'Tricks kinds of presentations! Check out these following three marketign slides I got from one of those Introducing VS 2010 slide decks! I have no beef with TFS, only that it's always PUSHED a lot more than the actual Visual Studio 2010 IDE is! I want to see what the IDE can do for me to help me get things done quicker, not that VS 2010 can manage and publish my automated test results, or that it can manage my virtual machine setups, or that .......it doesn't matter, I want to see the DEVELOPER FOCUSED improvements.
Unfortunately when I went to install my VisualSVN tool, things didn't go so smoothly.
I guess it's a bit too experimental? DOH!
Now that I have VS 2010 installed, I plan on putting it through a bit more rigorous testing as the weeks go by. hhhhmmmm wait a sec, I only have a certain amount of time to do that, there's a timebomb of 118 days with the RC? DOH!
hhhhmmmm what happens AFTER 118 days? OH, I'll have to go uninstall it. How many pieces are there to uninstall THIS time? OH well, that's ok, when I went to uninstall Beta 2, if you pick the right starting point, it'll do most of the grunt work FOR YOU! That's cool!
Ok, now that you've seen how to install Visual Studio 2010 RC Professional, from MSDN to looking at a solution file in VS, there shouldn't be any surprises. Now it's time to go grab a coffee and get coding!
Resources:
PCHenry.com: Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 Beta 2 Install Review
PCHenry.com: Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Uninstall
PCHenry.com: Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Uninstall (Take 2)
MSDN: Visual Stutio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Release Candidate
stackoverflow: Why doesn't Edit and Continue work on the x64 CLR?
MSDN: Edit and Continue