Grigori Melnik: Thoughts on Agile Software Engineering and Beyond : GAX

GAX/GAT February 2008 Final Release

gmelnik — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 02:42:00 GMT

The Guidance Automation Extensions (GAX) expands the capabilities of Visual Studio by allowing architects and developers to run guidance packages, such as those included in Software Factories, which automate key development tasks from within the Visual Studio environment.

The Guidance Automation Toolkit (GAT) is a guidance package which allows architects to author rich, integrated user experiences for reusable assets including Software Factories, frameworks, and patterns. The resulting Guidance Packages, composed of templates, wizards and recipes, help developers build solutions in a way consistent with the architecture guidance. In order to use the Guidance Automation Toolkit, you must first install the Guidance Automation Extensions.

New In This Release

The February 2008 Release of the Guidance Automation Extensions and Guidance Automation Toolkit has the following improvements to the earlier release, the July 2007 Community Technology Preview:

− Support for Visual Studio 2005 and/or Visual Studio 2008. This version of GAX will run on either version of Visual Studio. If you don’t have GAX installed, you can install GAX to support Visual Studio 2005 or Visual Studio 2008 or both. The installer will automatically determine which versions of Visual Studio you have installed.

− Updating GAX.

§ If you have a previous version of GAX installed on Visual Studio 2005, it will be updated to the February 2008 release of GAX. You are no longer required to uninstall GAX and the corresponding guidance packages.

§ Guidance packages that are registered with the previous version of GAX will automatically be registered with the current version of GAX (GAT, however, will require an update – see the information below).

− Visual Studio side-by-side support. If you have Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 running side-by-side, you can have GAX running against both versions. Guidance packages developed and registered through GAT for a specific version of Visual Studio (2005 or 2008) will only be available in that version. Guidance packages designed for Visual Studio 2005 and installed through an MSI will only be available in Visual Studio 2005. Installation of any guidance package through an MSI that does not explicitly prompt for the version of Visual Studio to install to, will install to Visual Studio 2005 by default.

− Improved Uninstaller. During GAX uninstallation, you can click the Check Installed Packages button for the list of all registered guidance packages. If you proceed with GAX removal, the uninstaller will only attempt to automatically uninstall those guidance packages that were registered manually using GAT. If you have guidance packages that were installed through an MSI(s), you should not proceed with removing GAX. Instead, you should use the Add or Remove Programs tool to uninstall these guidance packages.

In addition, this release of GAX has the following fixes:

− A blank error message was displayed if you attempted to uninstall GAX before uninstalling GAT or other registered packages when running Windows Vista.

− A FileLoadException error was displayed if you used the Guidance Package Manager on Visual Studio 2008 Professional.

− GAX and GAT would not properly validate and recognize custom Visual Studio project types when unfolding templates for custom project types registered only in the experimental hive.

Downloads

GAX and GAT must be downloaded and installed separately. GAT requires that GAX is installed first.

If you have a previous version of GAX installed on Visual Studio 2005, it will be updated to the February 2008 release of GAX. You are no longer required to uninstall GAX and the corresponding guidance packages (with an exception of GAT, which must be re-installed).

Enjoy!

New GAX/GAT July 2007 Released

gmelnik — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 00:41:00 GMT

I am pleased to announce the release of the July 2007 CTP of the Guidance Automation Toolkit and Guidance Automation Extensions.
(Note, the updated MSIs are published and available for download; while the MSDN page may still be saying February 2007 - that will be fixed as soon as MSDN changes propagate)

New in this release

It is a minor update to the previous February 2007 CTP, and includes the following fixes and improvements:

Support for both Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 Betas 1 and 2 (Orcas)
Improved installer (using The Windows Installer XML (WiX))
Support for Registration as Normal User (RANU) and experimental hive
Enhanced support for installing Visual Basic templates

Do I need to upgrade?

Upgrade is recommended but not required as there are no critical fixes. If you wish to design and run guidance packages on VS2008, this version of GAX/GAT must be installed.

How do I upgrade?

If you are running previous releases of GAX, you must

1) unregister all existing guidance packages (including GAT),

2) uninstall previous version of GAX

3) install the new version of GAX

4) reinstall the guidance packages.

This is far from ideal installation experience, but improving it is not trivial and was beyond the scope of this release.

Will existing guidance packages and software factories still work with this release?

Yes, if you run them on Visual Studio 2005.

However, any current guidance packages built against February 2007 CTP under Visual Studio 2005 (including all software factories provided by Microsoft patterns & practices on the date of this release - Web Client Software Factory, Smart Client Software Factory, Mobile Client Software Factory, and Web Service Software Factory) will NOT work on Orcas. Should you plan to design and run your own factories/guidance packages on Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, those will need to be specifically designed as such.

What kind of enhanced support is there for installing Visual Basic templates?

We have modified the GAX installation classes so they will not try registering VB templates at installation time if VB is not installed on the box. Previous versions of GAX did try this, and if no VB was in the box the entire installation failed. Now the installation will not fail and VB templates will simply not be shown.

Why is this still branded a CTP?

Like the previous releases, this new release is still labeled a Community Technology Preview. This is because the deliverables are still unsupported. Keep in mind that both GAX and GAT are only designed to run on development machines, not production servers. That said, we've gone through the same quality gates with GAT and GAX as we do with any other p&p release, and we are confident we have a high quality release.

Where do I get more information or post questions?

On the community forum: http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/showforum.aspx?forumid=78&siteid=1

GAX 1.3 - support for Orcas & more

gmelnik — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 02:42:00 GMT

GAX 1.3 is coming. The main goal was to port it to Orcas. This version will work for both Orcas and Whidbey and there is only a single MSI. Other new and improved features include:

New GAX installer (using Wix)
Experimental hive support
VB templates support in GAT generated packages

intro

gmelnik — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 00:24:00 GMT

Hello, and welcome to my blog. I've posted an entry on TDD earlier today and completely forgot to introduce myself. Let me do it properly now....

I am Grigori Melnik, a Senior Technical Product Planner with Microsoft patterns & practices. My current portfolio includes:

Enterprise Library, a collection of application blocks designed to assist programmers with common enterprise development challenges (like data access, caching, validation, logging, security, policy injection etc.)
Guidance Automation Extensions (GAX), a runtime for guidance packages, such as those included in Software Factories, for automating key development scenarios from within the Visual Studio),
and The Guidance Automation Toolkit (GAT), an authoring extension to Visual Studio for guidance packages.

I've taken over these from Tom Hollander, the father of EntLib, who's done a fantastic job at taking EntLib to its current high levels of popularity (over 600,000 downloads in 2 years and a solid base of customers standardising their development on EntLib). Though Tom has embarked on a new adventure back home in Sydney, he is still very much connected and involved with EntLib and EntLib Contrib communities. I am glad I can lean on his sholder - thanks, Tom!

In addition, I am involved with researching and revamping Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) and its agile instance. One of the tasks is to reconcile the rich body of engineering practices guidance with the MSF process guidance (not a trivial task which probably deserves a separate blog entry).

I'd like to mention and thank colleagues of mine who made my "inauguration" to p&p smooth and painless (so far :): Shaun Hayes, Rick Maguire, Wojtek Kozaczynski, Per Von Nielsen, J.D. Meier, Bill Loeffler, Don Smith, Glenn Block, Andrew Delin, Steve Elston, Mo Al-Sabt, Peter Provost, Ajoy Krishnamoorthy, Chris Tavares, Dmitri Ossipov, Victor Aprea, Bob Brumfield, Kim LaBreck.

They, along with many others, form a great fountain of knowledge and I am honoured to be a part of this talented and capable team!