Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 SP1 Beta

The blogs are abuzz this morning after the first beta release of the VS2008 and .NET 3.5 SP1.   Download it here.

In my opinion, this isn’t a service pack—this is a new version!

There are quite a few bug fixes (what you normally associate with a service pack), but also a huge list of new additions and improvements.

From Somasegar:

Traditionally our service packs address a range of issues found both through customer and partner feedback as well as our own internal testing.  While this service pack holds true to that theme and delivers updates for these types of issues, it also builds on the tremendous value that Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 deliver today and enables an improved developer experience by adding a number of additional components that cover a range of highly requested customer features. For example, the service pack is the first release for Visual Studio 2008 that delivers full support for SQL Server 2008 and the ADO.NET Entity Framework.

I’ve posted a few links at the end of the post to the more extensive sources right now, take a look and get ready for the plunge.

So, what am I most excited about?

• ADO.NET Entity Framework – I’m hoping that the “real” release motivates Oracle to develop provides for the entity framework and my dream of LINQ-esque connections to Oracle will be realized.
• ASP.NET Routing Engine – As the MVC framework gets closer to a production reality, it’s very motivating to see the underpinnings already in place.
• VS2008 Performance Improvements – Anything has to be an improvement.
• JavaScript Code Formatting – Sweet, now if I can only get JavaScript intellisense to work.
• LINQ Debug Support – Very nice, love seeing the generated SQL right there at debug time.

There are also lots of updates to WCF and WPF.  Hopefully this summer I’ll have more time to use these .NET 3.0 technologies and maybe be a bit more excited.

Visual Studio 2008 GUI/Tools

The Web Developer Tools team has released a comprehensive list of designer bug fixes, IIS templates and modules, formatting changes, intellisense upgrades, and more on their blog.

MVC and URL Routing

Phil Haack details the effects of the URL routing changes on the MVC Preview releases as well as how it affects the upcoming Preview 3.

Everything

ScottGu, as always does an excellent job tying everything up together—designer, framework, and tooling.

Now, if ReSharper 4.0 would EVER get to RTW before we’re ready to VS2009, it’d be super!

Tags: VS2008, .net+3.5, service+pack, microsoft, aspnetmvc, beta

ReSharper 4.0 missing .NET 3.5 support?

In my daily check of the jetbrains.resharper.eap newsgroup, my hopes of a January release of 4.0 EAP continues to dwindle—I mean, there’s only a couple more days left in the month.  I hit up the EAP section on JetBrains’ website and found that a 4.0 Roadmap was posted back on 8 January 08, but it’s lacking something kind of important.

Support for both Visual Studio 2005 and 2008

Don’t we have this now?

Comprehensive support for C# 3.0 language features, including:

• New code analysis, context actions and quick-fixes
• New refactorings (such as Convert to Extension Method, Convert to Automatic Property, Convert Anonymous Type to Named)
• Updated IntelliSense

Again, I thought 3.0 support (XAML, etc) was supported in 3.1.  Automatic Property support will be really nice.  Convert to Extension Method should be interesting.  Does this mean full support for WCF, WF, and WPF?

Many more intelligence and productivity features

• Full set of refactorings available for VB.NET
• New quickfixes and context actions for XAML files
• Referenced assemblies are now taken into account in null-reference analysis thanks to external annotations. ReSharper is packaged with annotations for the .NET Framework assemblies
• Code Cleanup — a tool for ensuring compliance with code guidelines and enhancing code structure
• Complete Statement — a feature that will complete language constructs and get you ready to write the next statement
• Many other enhancements and new features throughout the product.

Code Cleanup looks appealing as does Complete Statement, though I’m wondering how processor intensive they’ll be (working up permutations, etc).

So, what’s missing?

There’s no mention of .NET 3.5 support beyond the extension methods and automatic properties.

Nothing about LINQ, Lambda expressions, true 64–bit client support (ReSharper is a 32–bit app right now—I can dream, can’t I?), or AJAX or CSS refactoring.   Nothing talking about the newest .NET web development technologies like MVC.

I realize they can’t keep up to the SECOND with everything (though that does speak to a more worthwhile partnership between Microsoft and JetBrains for the end users like myself), but 2008’s been RTM since November and, quite honestly, I haven’t used ReSharper since.  I spend too much time with the newer technologies that I found I was wasting time by fighting ReSharper.  Does it annoy me?  Hell yes.  Am I looking for a replacement tool? Yeah, but CodeRush’s “pretty arrows” annoy the crap out of me, so I’m just using macros and built-in refactoring in VS2008.

So… JetBrains—where’s our full 3.5 support and when can we start beating the pavement with the bits?

UPDATE 30 January 2008: From the EAP newsgroup today:

*cheer!*

Tags: JetBrains, ReSharper, EAP, Visual+Studio+2008, .net+3.5

Visual Studio 2008 RTM and Express Available!

While I was joking about MSDN Subscriber Downloads acting flaky this morning, after a bit of patience I found out why…

Visual Studio 2008 TS RTM

Visual Studio 2008 ACTUALLY made it out the door before Thanksgiving (okay, yes, I admit, I had my doubts)!

I’m truly pumped up about this… and remain so as the little download bar has oh so very slowly been progressing throughout the day.

45.9 KB/sec… on an OC-3 line running directly into our office.  I started it around 9:00 AM, so its been 6 hours thus far… 6 hours remaining.  I’ll need coffee for this one.

[Update: 20 Nov 2007– MSDN has added Team Suite, Professional, and the other flavors, both in Trial and full version (for subscribers) to the Top Subscribers downloads.  Top Subscribers are high speed downloads powered by the Akamai Downloader.  I started pulling down Professional for our other MSDN subscriber today and its screaming by at 900 KB/sec.  Sweets.]

Visual Web Developer 2008 Express

In addition to the RTM build for MSDN Subscribers, the Web Development Tools Team announced that the VWD2008 Express also made it out the door this morning.  You can download the bits here.

.NET Framework 3.5 Redistributable

To go along with the tools above, the full 3.5 Framework has been released and made available both as a partial internet download and a full package.  According to the description, this distribution includes:

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 contains many new features building incrementally upon .NET Framework 2.0 and 3.0, and includes .NET Framework 2.0 service pack 1 and .NET Framework 3.0 service pack 1.

.NET Framework 3.5 – Full Distribution

.NET Framework 3.5 – Internet Download Distribution

None of the distribution sites mention the .vbs script that had to be ran with Beta 2 to “fix” multitargeting support in Visual Studio 2008–-perhaps that’s fixed.

Tags: .net+framework, .net+3.5, visual+web+developer+2008, visual+studio+2008, msdn