I currently have Visual Studio 2008 Developer Edition. I wish to renew this and get the 3 year SA. However the cost is crazy (around 6-7K USD). The only things that I require above and beyond what Visual Studio Professional Edition used to have are access to TFS (Team Foundation Server) and the ability to create and run Test projects (especially the ability to generate the stubs for unit testing private methods).
Therefore is it true that Visual Studio Professional plus a separate purchase of a TFS CAL will do exactly this for me?
Yes, those two will fill your technical requirements but I'm no licensing expert so I'm not going to say that its all you'll need from a licensing perspective.
In case you haven't seen there’s a document which describes the features of all the different SKUs at Visual Studio 2008 Product Comparison Guide
UPDATE:
There's a paper about licensing at Visual Studio Team System 2008 Licensing White Paper
Visual Studio professional does not contain the full suite of automated Testing tools provided in Team Suite editions so you can't really do TDD (if that's your aim) without additional tools.
You can however create and run Test Projects so they are at last available if you can find an alternative test generation tool or are working with a solution with tests already in it.
If you are an ISV (independent solution vendor) you might look at the BizSpark program. If you qualify software licensing becomes a great deal simpler for the next three years. ($300)
Hope that helps,
Dan
BizSpark
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I'm in the process of deciding whether or not to use Visual Studio 2012 Express for Desktop or purchase a retail copy of Visual Studio 2012 Professional for my desktop program. The program is built using C# though portions of it may include F#.
From what I've gathered so far, the express edition supports NuGet, Unit Testing, and Code Analysis. It mentions a subset of Code Analysis rules are used but I'm unsure how they compare to the professional edition as well as FxCop/StyleCop.
I'm assuming the express edition lacks extension support but the only extension I really cared about was NuGet. I also assume it doesn't include a TFS CAL despite having the ability to connect to TFS. This again isn't an issue as I'm using Perforce for source control. I also understand that this version is limited to desktop style applications only, but have so far only seen mention C++ and C#. Does it support F#?
Can someone clue me in as to any other limitations of 2012 Express for Desktop? Are there any license limitations for developing a commercial application?
In the past, MS included express editions as part of their version comparison. But when they updated their site for 2012, they separated out the express editions and offer little to no detail.
There are few limitation I can gather :
First of all there are different IDE's for different use
Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web.
Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows 8
Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop.
Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Express 2012
Express editions of the IDE omit the following features included in the Professional editions
Multi-unit testing framework and refactoring support
Static code analysis, profiling, and HLSL editing and debugging
Third-party extensibility support (though the Extension Manager feature is still present)
OpenMP support
But there are few positives I explore in 2012 :
Unlike previous version
Solution is allowed, you can create multiple projects in a single solutions.
64bit compilations support is there.
If working in single or less than 5 person team, express is the way to go.
It definitely bring much more new and unlock features than it predecessors.
As you receive a product key if you register I think it confirms that you then are free to use VS 2012 Express as you like.
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/downloads#d-2010-express say:
"After installation, you can try this product for up to 30 days. You
must register to obtain a free product key for ongoing use after 30
days."
"Productivity Power Tools 2012" cannot be installed on VS2012 Express edition, hence such features like "Entity Framework Reverse Engineer Code First" won't be available, which is critical to migrate existing apps's DB into Model's classes.
Portable Class Libraries are not supported in express versions. (You can reference PCL dlls, you just can't work with PCL projects.)
F# is available for VS Express 2012 for Web
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/fsharpteam/archive/2012/09/12/announcing-the-release-of-f-tools-for-visual-studio-express-2012-for-web.aspx
Looks like NuGet worked with VS 2010 Express Web so I would expect it to work with 2012
http://docs.nuget.org/docs/start-here/nuget-faq
Professional gives you a lot of the profiling and static analysis tools. I couldn't find out how the FxCop rules differ.
My university has several programs available for download. About 6 months ago I downloaded visual studio 2010 ultimate edition. I am not sure if it is the trial version. I don't think so because I've been using it for about 6 months and I have not had to extend any trial. Moreover, I don't get the splash screen that says for evaluation purposes only. I used to have that screen on a trial of visual studio profesional edition that I had in my previos computer. If I dont have a trial version that means I can distribute my applications?
In Help > About Microsoft Visual Studio you can see licensing information. Mine says that it is licensed to me (yay!) and yours should say something similar.
I am not sure about volume licensing, because ours has been bought through an Open Value contract and we have MSDN accounts for every developer, so you have to download your own product key from the MSDN site. Perhaps there are versions of 2010 which do not require you to enter a product key in a different volume licensing contract, but I am not aware of those.
Really though, if you are on a student edition you are not supposed to use it for commercial applications. Just be safe and buy a copy if you are going to distribute your applications (especially commercially).
For those students out there, as a point of interest, Microsoft offers a lot of free software on dreamspark.com (Visual studio 2010 Professional included) in which you should have no problems distributing your own applications - You just need a .edu email.
Regardless of whether Visual Studio is prompting you to purchase a full version, you've obtained your copy via your university. Your best bet is to ask someone in your university's IT department.
You also probably signed an agreement as part of your enrolment which would clarify this.
I'm not quite sure how the Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate licensing works.
How many developers can use Visual Studio in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate?
Is it a single user product? or for as many developers as required?
See buying here :
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/subscriptions/buy.aspx
Per developer (usually named). There is also volume licensing if you have a lot of dev heads
When you buy the Ultimate license, if you don't have some sort of corporate subscription, the price you see on the site is a per-developer cost.
Ultimate is expensive. My advice would be to look over what it gives you versus what your team needs and decide from there. Depending on the work you're doing, Professional may be enough (I don't typically advise going lower).
This is a single user product. There's a separate page for volume licensing: http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/default.aspx
Here is a whitepaper that describes more about the licensing process of Visual Studio, published in September of 2010:
From the link:
This white paper provides an overview of the Visual Studio 2010 product line, including MSDN subscriptions, and the licensing requirements for those products in common deployment scenarios.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=2b1504e6-0bf1-46da-be0e-85cc792c6b9d&displaylang=en
I've been using the trial edition of Visual Studio 2008 Team System to develop projects and work with my client's Team Foundation Server. I am using the Team Explorer integration / source control plugin.
My trial is expiring and I'm having trouble finding information on what exactly I need to purchase. I don't need to actually run a TFS server myself, but I do need the ability to connect to my clients and get/put files, and the integration with Team Explorer in VS is really nice, hence I'd rather not have to use an external 3rd party tool.
Do I need Team System to accomplish this or does Visual Studio 2008 Professional have the same TFS Plugin, and if so does it work the same?
I can't believe I'm having such a hard time finding the differences between the versions... if anyone has a good resource that'd be nice before I shell out $3,000 on something I don't need. I develop mainly ASP.NET Solutions if that matters. Thanks!
Visual Studio 2008 Product Comparison Guide
I don't need to actually run a TFS server myself, but I do need the ability to connect to my clients
Whoever is running TFS should procure CALs (Client Access License) so that any client that works with this server is covered. I believe you buy them separately per client machine (somewhat around 400$ each). Also VS Team System editions have one or two CALs included. That may be or may not be worth it for you.
And yes, you can access TFS from VS 2008 Pro, just need to install the integration plugin.
I don't know if that is possible at all for you, but if you can, I would wait for Visual Studio 2010 (to be released in march 2010). Not only is it a better product than VS2008 but also they have simplified the versioning/licensing part, also Team Foundation Server 2010 Basic may be suitable for your source control needs.
If you want to take a look, you can download the beta versions of VS2010 and TFS2010.
What are the differences between visual studio and VS express edition?
Probably very googelable, but than again, I have read that coverage in StackOverflow is a good thing.
You can download a comparison from Microsoft. And another one from here.
The Express edition does not come with the Microsoft C++ runtime redistributable packages, nor does it itself grant you permission to distribute them. So the users of the software you build with the Express edition will have to download & run the installers themselves.
I might have missed it in the excel sheet, but some big ones are lack of proper source control integration and 3rd party tool integrations. Express editions are missing unit tests as wel.
Lack of support in Refactoring and advanced debugging is a major issue I feel.