Why is the IntalliTrace option greyed-out when publishing to Azure? - visual-studio-2010

I've got VS2010 Ultimate and a single Azure role (granted, it's dependant on a lot of other, smaller projects).
When trying to deploy it, the option to enable IntelliTrace is greyed-out. All of the projects are .NET 4.0 projects, so as far as I can tell, this shouldn't be happening.
Please help.

Are you running on a 32 bit machine? You need this to enable Intellitrace on non-64 bits machines.

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VS2010 web setup project needs IIS6 (metabase) compatibility on IIS7. Consequences or other issues for the application?

When trying to install a web setup project (MSI) created in Visual Studio 2010 on Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 2008 Server the setup will fail, with some generic error.
According to http://devio.wordpress.com/2011/04/26/pitfalls-installing-web-setup-msi-on-iis-7/ this is because of a compatibility problem between the setup project en IIS7.
To resolve this I've to enable/install IIS6 metabase compatibility in my windows configuration. This workaround did fix the problem, but raises 2 questions:
Does this have any (negative) impact on functionality of IIS 7?
How can I notify a user running the installation of this problem so he or she can take proper action and install the metabase compatibility component? Is it possible to pop-up the windows component configuration dialog from this install, to make life easier for the user?
I don't think this will have any impact on the application itself, as long as it's implemented the way to talk to IIS7 via its native API. Otherwise, if it doesn't support IIS7 you'd have to enable IIS6 compatibility anyway.
The standard approach to search for anything on a target machine is searching registry and file system. I don't know how it is possible in VS setup project, but e.g. WiX has special elements for this (RegistrySearch, DirectorySearch, FileSearch). Basically, this post to WiX Tips and Tricks thread shows how to check for IIS6 compatibility in WiX and block the installation if it's not enables/installed. It's rather straight-forward even if you don't know WiX, but know the concepts of Windows Installer, and it can help you translate the code into the similar thing in VS setup project.
We seem to be having one negative impact on our servers.
Everytime we roll out a .NET 4.0 application with a msi made in Visual Studio, We get a recycle of ALL our application pools, even the ones not affected by the install.
Apparently the root cause of this is the IIS 6 compatibility. ( This was reported to us by a developer of microsoft in response to our support question about this.
At the moment we have no solution. It's impossible to convert all our installers to Wix.

Multiple users using single installation of Visual Studio

We are a group of four students who have to develop SharePoint web parts for a certain project. After two weeks of trying out various options, the only possible way we could do it was to set up a Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit virtual machine (using VMware Player) on a Windows 7 Professional 64-bit desktop with an i3 540 (because it supports VT, unlike the laptops we four have), make four user accounts on the VM OS, and remote desktop into it from our laptops to develop. The VM has Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint SDKs installed.
My question is; if we create four different projects in Visual Studio, can we concurrently use that single installation of Visual Studio from remote desktop to work on our individual projects?
If yes, what kind of problems should we expect and how can we ensure we don't run into them?
Alternatively, is there another more trouble-free way of working this out (like changing some setting in Visual Studio to allow multiple instances, etc.)?
Thanks!
While this should work without issues, I would take care with an issue like this.
I would first verify that this is allowed under your current licensing for Visual Studio. I suspect that this is likely a violation of the license agreement, and as such, I would take care with trying to find a better solution. It may be allowed under your license (as there are many different forms of licensing), but I would check this very carefully prior to operating in this manner.
That being said, I suspect this will work fine. Visual Studio does take care to work and store settings per user account, so there is likely no issue. Microsoft Support would be the proper channel for support if you do run into any problems while operating, however.
If your laptops are 64-bit, I would install Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint 2010 on each of your laptops. If your laptops are 32-bit, I would create 4 separate virtual servers.
Beyond the licensing that Reed points out, I would be concerned about resource sharing. During a SharePoint 2007 project, we had 3 developers sharing a single SharePoint virtual server with Visual Studio 2008 installed on each of our laptops. Everything went fine for awhile until development got really heavy. As soon as one developer would finish running a deployment job, another would start one. The application pool was down so often that the web sites were unusable. Everything was fine once we each got our own virtual server.
If you really must use one server (not recommended), then i would suggest you create 4 seperate web applications. This means they will each get a seperate application pool. Then each users should still be able to debug their webparts without effecting the other users. The debugger should only "break" the application pool that the user is on.

Visual Studio 2008 64-bit debugging strategy

We are moving to an all-64-bit development environment. Unfortunately VS 2008 and, more importantly, its built-in web server, run in 32-bit mode. When debugging code that references 64-bit assemblies - Oracle.DataAccess, for example - we experience the dreaded System.BadImageFormatException.
Can anyone offer any strategies for debugging code with 64-bit dependencies in VS? I suppose we could use a 32-bit Oracle provider, but we would like to emulate the production environment as closely as possible.
I have a similar setup on 64 bit Vista where I have the web site deployed in IIS - this site has in been successfully run and debugged in both 32 and 64 bit.
The biggest problem I have found is working in a mixed environment where some members on the project team are still on 32 bit Windows (both XP and Vista).
This causes headaches with project references to Oracle.DataAccess which I have only managed to solve with bindingRedirect entries in the web.config file in order to point to the correct version of the assembly.
If you use IIS7 you can choose 32/64 bit mode. You will then have to have your projects kick up with IIS instead of cassini which takes a little bit of work, but I think it will solve the problem with Oracle at least. Honestly I don't know how that would all work when attaching at 32bit debugger to it.
We use VMware hosts to give each of our web site developers their own virtual web server. You can use full IIS (as #KevinWon suggested) and install a 64-bit version of the debugger on them. I don't know the specifics of what our guys do - I found this out over a coffee the other day.
Set up an local IIS on your computer and set it to run in 32bit mode
http://kb.parallels.com/en/2131
If you enable the Debuging mode you can work with it, just like you would with the integrated development server. But you don't have to mess with the 32/64bit assemblies

Does anybody have experience with Visual Studio 2008 on Windows 7?

Has anyone already tried this, anything particulair that I need to be aware of?
Yep, been running it for a while and I haven't hit any problems yet. Can't say I've use it all day every day, but I've built WPF, WinForms, Web and Console apps with it for testing various things and haven't had any hitches.
I have it on my Dell X1, which is effectively my "NetBook", and it's really pretty rapid. The only glitch I have had at all is some problems with graphics acceleration, but that's down to the Intel driver I'm using being an old XP driver, and it was easily worked around.
I've been running it inside a VM in Parallels Desktop 4 on a MacBook Pro. Absolutely no problems to speak of.
(There's no sound in Windows 7 as virtualized through Parallels, which is a known issue — but not very pertinent to the operation of Visual Studio.)
Jeroen,
I've been unable to install the 2008 Team Developer edition - keep getting a permission error. I was, however, able to insall the 2008 Team Database edition. I normally install both editions, so am kind of bummed about not getting the Developer edition to install. Screenshot of the error is here if you're curious.
No Problem with team edition, but only using it for web projects.
I've been using it at work since RC1 and have not run into any issues. Have developed a WinForms app, a WebForms site and now working on a MVC project.
I have had zero problems running Visual Studio 2008 Pro on 32 bit and 64 bit editions of Windows 7 for full-time C++ development.
If the application you are developing doesn't behave correctly under UAC you may will need to run the IDE as admin otherwise it won't run correctly under debug (this is the applications problem, not Windows 7 or Visual Studios).
Others seem to have problems with access rights/permissions, this should also be fixable by running the IDE as admin (via right click) or more permanently via the compatibility tab in the shortcut properties.
I don't know why this happens, is probably related to their particular user account settings.

What is the most common feature that demands the use of Visual Studio Professional over Standard?

I'm afraid my trial of VS 2008 is running out soon, and unless a client pays for it, I might be shelling out some cash for it. I've been looking through the comparison chart to compare VS Professional to Standard, and so far I think I'm safe. I wanted to hear from you on what the most important features are that I would be missing.
Of course, you don't know all the details of my situation - but please just answer based on what you perceive as most important.
Developing Windows Mobile Applications and availability of Database Projects are the showstoppers for me (this applies to Visual Studio 2008).
That's it really. This was a dealbreaker for me though since I wanted to join this mobile application programming contest and was floored when I found out I couldn't do it with Standard.
Otherwise you're fine with Standard edition.
The major downside of the Express Edition is they don't support addons - so you have to make sure your Source Control software has a standalone client.
Remote Debugging, Server Explorer, Compact Development (With Device Emulator). It really does depend on your situation but I don't think you'll be without a paddle in general.
"Attach to remote process" is a must. It lets you debug your application in several virtual (or physical) machines running different versions of Windows without installing Visual Studio on each such machine: you would run Visual Studio on your main development computer and attach it to the instance of your application running on another machine, and debug it that way. That's the only way I debug my applications, I never debug them on the development computer. HTH.
Very little difference between the two. The only one I can think of is remote debugging is not available in standard.
You may want to look into the VS 2008 Express editions. Install them and see if you can do everything you need to using the Express editions. Most things that you need/use are in the Express editions, and they're Free. Also, you can use them for commercial use all you want.
For me OMP support in "standard" is what's nice to have, if your into that

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