Should I start using VS2010 Beta 2 for development work now?
What reasons are there for and against?
You can take two angles with this; using Visual Studio to build your solutions in a .NET 3.5 or earlier OR using it to build applications in .NET 4. Firstly, familiarise yourself with what’s new in both the IDE and the framework (I’ve got a quick, illustrated overview here and there's heaps of other info on the web) and see what you’re actually going to be able to take advantage of in your situation. Secondly, be aware of your target environment; If you’re publishing to shared hosting or client machines you need to consider whether the .NET 4 approach is wise while it's in beta.
I’ve previously built solutions on the last couple of generations of Visual Studio and .NET whilst in beta 2. You’ve got a go-live license so you can actually productionise solutions and both previous generations have been very stable without any significantbugs or changes from beta 2 to alpha versions.
If you can address the issues above, I say go for it!
Only if you're interested in trying it out. Don't use it for real work as it. It's a beta, which means that significant bugs may still be lying around in the code.
We started using VS*2008* Beta 2, when it came out, as our main dev environment - but targeted .NET Framework 2.0 only initially. This was mainly because VS2005 was such a dog. As to whether you want to start targeting .NET 4.0 now is your decision - but I can't see the harm in using it for targeting .NET 2.0 - 3.5.
I think we'll stick with VS 2008 for our main dev environment until at least a 2010-compatible version of CodeRush/Refactor Pro comes out.
I say whats wrong with 2008? You could use 2010 to build for 3.5 framework if you really wanted to, but I'd seriously leave it, it might be more trouble than its worth..who knows?
I have it installed and I've had a play with it and I've even installed resharper beta that works with 2010. But this is only to give the new tools a test run.
The company I work for are really good at keeping up with the latest tools, for example we have already rolled out windows 7 to some developer machines, but we wouldn't go as far as using a beta IDE in a production environment.
Related
Officially, it's supported. I get that. I've personally done it in a VM. My question is, are there any hidden gotchas of running VS2012.x side by side with VS2010 SP'd and hotfix'd? I recall reading about an issue with the version of .NET or the CLR, I don't recall the details and it was last fall.
My coworkers and I would really like to move to 2012 but we have a lead developer that refuses to move. We need to convince him, especially since we have a large project that was started on 3.5, moved to 4.0 (will not go to 4.5), but we've heard rumblings about the aforementioned possible problem.
.NET Framework 4.5 is an in-place update. This means that once you install it all apps (including VS 2010) will be running against .NET Framework 4.5 and not .NET Framework 4. While there has been a great effort to make .NET Framework 4.5 backwards compatible there are some (mostly minor) bugs where the behavior changed in .NET Framework 4.
I think the biggest thing you should consider is whether you are going to target .NET Framework 4 in your apps. The problem is that when you target .NET Framework 4 your VS2012 will only allow you to use APIs that as they were in .NET Framework 4 but your app will actually run using .NET Framework 4.5 runtime. I have seen cases where a legitimate bug in .NET Framework 4.5 was fixed (i.e. an incorrect exception is no longer thrown) but when you run your app against real .NET Framework 4 the app did not work even though it targeted .NET Framework 4 because the bug is still there. Note that you can get to the same situation even with VS 2010 if you install .NET Framework 4.5 on your box. I have been running both SxS and I have not had any problems (but am primarily using VS2012 - is so much faster and more stable).
I think the main take aways here are
if you are working on .NET Framework 4 make sure you test your app on real .NET Framework 4
try running VS2012 sxs with VS2010 on a limited set of machines and if you don't see any problem move on
you may also try running VS2012 only if you don't use any functionality that is not supported in VS2012 (the biggest risk in this case is the .NET Framework anyway and running VS2010 only will not protect you anyways)
I'm doing a project with a couple of other guys who have vs10, will it hurt if just I upgrade to vs12. Will it hurt when we all check in on svn? Will everything still be compatible as far as wpf, mvc, etc.. goes. Should I be aware of anything about the new visual studio 2012?
I personally would keep a similar environment to everyone else working on the project - either all go 2012 or all stay 2010.
Not to say that there are or are not known issues with working between the two environments, but why introduce possible problems when you're going to work with the lowest possible common denominator anyways?
Using VS2012 and VS2010 seems to work flawlessly, so far. I installed it a month ago when it became available on MSDN. I've worked on several problems since then without any compatibility issues. Rather worryingly though, we've come across an issue where a linq to entities query works fine on a machine without .net 4.5, but fails on a machine with .net 4.5, despite the project targeting .net 4.0. A colleague is looking at this at the moment, so I don't have any more details
I currently have Visual Studio v2003, v2005, v2008 installed on my system. Things work fine...no issues.
I now have to install Visual Studio 2010 on my system and just wanted to know if anyone has a setup like mine or knows if there are any potential issues with so many versions existing on a system.
Really don't have a choice to remove older versions as we have a lot of legacy products written in these old versions and we are not upgrading them to new versions, only doing bug fixes on them.
Any ideas?
Thanks!
VS2010 supports targeting on multiple versions of .NET Framework (i.e. 2.0 or later), which mean it is designed to support the projects that were built with VS2005/VS2008 so-called backward-compatibility.
So I think no conflict here between these versions,
I've found a nice Myths and facts about VS 2005/2008/2010, check out this link here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/ee679805.aspx
It should work.
I have vs2003, vs2008 and vs2010 installed and I see no issue (but vs2010 is not yet used for production code).
M.
All these versions of Visual Studio are independent.
You should have no problem (other than lack of disk space!) installing VS2010 as well.
Just make sure you install the service pack as well.
They cohabitate fine, I have a similar setup myself.
You should at least push for migrating away from 2003 and 2005 though, they use some pretty old technology, and pretty much everyone these days has .net 3.5 on their systems.
If you are able to use VS 2010 I would highly recommend you do for all new projects - even if you have to target an earlier version of .NET framework.
Keep the old versions of VS installed only for maintenance of projects that cannot be migrated to VS 2010 version.
By the way, the migration to VS 2010 is often very trivial and well worth an hour or two of effort!
I am too paranoid to install VS2010 Beta 2 on my production machine beside VS2008 without hearing from people who have already took the plunge. I know MS says it's OK, but that does not necessarily mean it will work.
Has anyone successfully installed VS2010 Beta 2 (preferably Ultimate edition) on their production machine with no negative consequences?
If you're that paranoid (and perhaps reasonably so!), have you thought of running it up in a virtual machine ? You can then point it to the same source repository, and be confident that the two won't interfere.
I have installed VS2010 beta 2 in my machine, together with VS2008, and it seems to work fine. There were two compelling reasons for me to start using it right now, both related to Silverlight: unit testing and visual designer.
Take a look at some of the list of known issues in VS 2010 beta 2.
I have installed it to a machine with VS 2008 on it that I don't care about. :)
Looking at the "correct" uninstall procedure from that link above makes me think that not putting it on a production box is a good idea... Going from that beta to the next one is going to be a PITA.
And whoever said they are WPF/Winform it won't conflict is crazy. .Net 4 installs side by side, yes. But there are policy files and binding redirects installed for all editions on your box because VS 2010 can also build / debug / test .Net 2/3/3.5 assemblies. You are touching every .Net runtime on your box when you install VS 2010 (like it or not).
It's working for me; I haven't seen any problems so far (admittedly in, like, one day).
That said, I'd be a lot more cautious if we didn't have a separate build server for our production builds.
Since it's in Beta, I would not install it on a production box; not even in your daily development machine. The best solution is a virtual machine, which is the way I always try beta software.
VS2010 beta 1 worked perfectly alongside VS2005 and VS2008 on two PCs for me. (One XP, one Vista)
It also uninstalled cleanly in both cases.
This is no guarantee of Beta2 working perfectly of course, but you should be ok. Generally the advice is: don't install Beta visual studio releases on development machines - use a virtual PC or a PC you don't mind reinstalling the OS on.
I have a parallel install of VS 2008 and VS 2010 beta 2. The only negative consequence is that some Microsoft DLLS (Microsoft.Test...) that is part of the unittest framework on both vs2008 and vs2010 needs to be referenced by version in the vs.net 2008 projects. Otherwise vs2008 may just pick the vs2010 reference by default and you get compilation errors.
I'm about to start a new WPF project and there are a number of things in 4.0 that I need (multitouch for one). I've heard that VS 2010 beta 2 will be released at PDC in November so I'm considering starting the project in beta 1 now, then migrating to beta 2 when it becomes available. Assuming I only need to live with the environment for about 3 months would it be reasonable to start this project in VS 2010 beta 1 or is it not ready for daily development?
I'm not sure you're going to get the answer you're looking for here. In part because it's really hard to understand what you mean by "ready".
Visual Studio 2010 Beta1 is a beta product and hence will have beta issues. It will crash more often, have more performance issues, less features and generally speaking not as smooth of an experience as an RTM product would. That's essentially the definition of a beta.
But is it ready? I use it on a daily basis at home and work for essentially every project I work on (including those which ship on the 2.0 or 3.5 framework). Yeah I occasionally run into some annoying bugs. But nothing so severe that I stopped using the product.
I've been doing a few things myself with .NET 4.0 recently, nothing major or for production, but it seems stable enough.
Though others may have had a different experience to me.
As it's beta software, I wouldn't recommend using it for Production purposes until it's fully released, or at the point of RC.
However, like I say, it seems to be stable enough in the .NET aspect of things, but I've not tpyed with WPF 4 yet so I would leave that decision up to you.