Following on the release last week of SQLServer 2008, we are proud to announce the release of Visual Studio/Visual Studio Team System 2008 SP1, Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1 and the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1.  You can download them here.  Bootstrappers are for online installs and iso is if you want to download the whole thing and install offline or share it with several people.  The TFS download is an iso.  I'm not sure about the .NET 3.5 one.

These updates bring some unbelievably good value.  If you've been following my commentary, then you already know these are not our traditional service pack.  In addition to new platform support (like support for the newly released SQLServer 2008) and the traditional roll up of hot fixes and other high priority bug fixes, these service packs are packed full of new value.  I would have write I book to enumerate everything we have.  At a very high level, the improvements include:

  • Improved WPF designers
  • SQLServer 2008 support
  • ADO.NET Entity designer
  • Visual Basic & Visual C++ improvements (including an MFC-based Office 2007 style 'Ribbon')
  • Team Foundation Server improvements - detailed here
  • Richer JavaScript support, enhanced AJAX and data tools and web site deployment improvements
  • A new .NET profile for client applications that is much smaller and installs much faster
  • Substantial .NET performance improvements (particularly in startup time)
  • And much, much more...

A few notes on this SP from a TFS perspective...

  • As always, please read the readme file.  It will contain valuable information.
  • Download and read the updated TFS Installation guide.  You will find a link to it on the TFS 2008 SP1 download page.
  • If you are going to install .NET 3.5 SP1 on your TFS 2008 server, you MUST install TFS 2008 SP1.  There is a small incompatibility that results in the version control permissions dialog being empty if you don't upgrade to TFS 2008 SP1 at the same time.  You can install .NET 3.5 SP1 on your TFS 2005 SP1 server without experiencing this issue and without requiring any TFS 2005 update.
  • This release of TFS supports SQLServer 2008, however, there are some important things to know.
    • You can't install the original TFS 2008 release on SQLServer 2008 - it will fail.  And this is a service pack can must be installed on top of an existing TFS installation - so how can we make this work?  You have two options:
      1. If you already have TFS 2008 installed with a SQLServer 2005 database, you can install TFS 2008 SP1 and then upgrade your SQLServer 2005 database to SQLServer 2008.
      2. If you already have TFS 2005 installed with a SQLServer 2005 database, you must upgrade to TFS 2008 (requires purchasing it, of course) and then upgrade to TFS 2008 SP1 and finally upgrade to SQLServer 2008 (also requires purchasing it).
      3. If you don't yet have TFS installed and want to do a fresh install of TFS and use SQLServer 2008, you need to install TFS in a "special" way.  You need to use what we call "slipstream" install or "admin mode" install.  What you do is run a series of commands to merge the TFS 2008 SP1 into a copy of the original TFS 2008 installation media.  This creates a new "setup" that can then be run and installed against a SQL 2008 database.  You will find detailed instructions for this in the update TFS installation guide referenced from the TFS 2008 SP1 download page.
    • There have been some reports of a few of our reports breaking with the final build of SQLServer 2008.  We are investigating that now and I will update you as soon as we know more.
  • There are a couple of other reasons you may want to use the "admin mode" installer approach described above...
    • If you are upgrading from TFS 2005 to TFS 2008 and you have a lot (like > 1,000) builds created by TFS Build on your server, the TFS 2008 install had a bug that would cause it to fail.  The "admin mode" installer of SP1 has fixed this problem and should allow you to do a one step upgrade from TFS 2005 to TFS 2008 SP1, side stepping this problem.
    • Because of the timing of the TFS 2008 and Windows Server 2008 releases, we had to remove the ability for the TFS 2008 installer to install and configure Sharepoint Server on a Windows 2008 server.  We have added it back in TFS 2008 SP1.  So, if you'd like to do an install of TFS 2008 on a Windows 2008 server and avoid installing Sharepoint yourself, you can use the "admin mode" installation experience and have TFS install and configure Sharepoint for you.  None of this applies to Windows Server 2003 - TFS 2008 would install Sharepoint on a Windows 2003 server just fine.

I really think you are going to love this service pack.  It's very compatible with what you are already using and yet delivers a ton of new things to make your life better.  As always, let me know about any issues or questions you have and I will find someone to help you if I can't.

If you have setup issues, a great first resource is Heath's blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/heaths/archive/tags/VS+2008+SP1/default.aspx.  Here's a useful entry about collecting setup log information: http://go.microsoft.com/?LinkId=8967044

Brian