Allen has posted the current product backlog that we are hoping to accomplish for the Version 4 version...

Can be found here. This is the last version supporting vs.net2005

...

Thanks for involving the user community in your planning process. Really appreciated.

A few questions:

1) Are the lower numbered items of higher priority?

2) Given v4 is the last release for VS2005, what's the impact of Orcas on API stability?

Public information on Orcas is really sketchy - no roadmap, no platform level feature list, and available downloads are limited to GUI/DB areas. Please advise the VSSDK community on the roadmap for VisualStudio itself, e.g. enhancements to the architecture, project handling, debug engine, editor, etc. VisualStudio's true strength lies in its deep C++ constituents and its ability to allow native language integration. Without that, people would have adopted competitor IDEs like IntelliJ. A little more information on Orcas would be highly beneficial to your users' planning process.

3) Would V4 support VS2005 SP1?

4) If VS2005 releases SP2, would VSSDK be updated, or at least certified, to work with SP2?

5) Is native Babel being end-of-lifed in favor of the C# version?

6) Will VSL continue to be enhanced?

7) Please elaborate a little more about the community related features. Are they being baked into the product?

8) What do the acronyms stands for: OOBE, PIA, GDR

Thanks.

We have just completed the planning for VS SDK 4.0 last week. My good dev lead has posted the plans on

Hi there, I am the PM on the VS SDK team, and I can help answer some of your questions.

1) Yes, lower the number, higher the priority. Priority 10 is more important than Priority 20.

2) v4 is purely targeted at VS 2005. It has nothing to do with Orcas API stability. However, it is our goal to make your packages as compatible as possible and we always avoid making breaking changes.

3) Yes, VS SDK 4.0 will support SP1. In fact, we regularly do test passes with SP1.

4) Yes, if there were ever a SP2, we will do test passes on that as well and make sure the VS SDK work well with it.

5) Native Babel - I wouldn't say that. The native babel serve a different need than MPPG and MPLex.

6) VSL - We have no plans to continue to enhance VSL at this point. From the customer feedback we received, our customers prefer us to invest in the managed package framework.

7) Community features - Ah... great question. We are still spec'ing these right now and we have nothing concrete to share at this point.

8) OOBE is out-of-box experience. PIA is primary interop assemblies and GDR is Globally Distributed Release.

Hope that helps.

- James

Allen has posted the current product backlog that we are hoping to accomplish for the Version 4 version