Earlier this week version 1.2 or the February 2007 Community Technology Preview of the Guidance Automation Extensions (GAX) and the Guidance Automation Toolkit (GAT) was released to the web.

• The Guidance Automation Extensions (GAX) enable you to run guidance packages, such as the Guidance Automation Toolkit or those included in Software Factories. You can use the Guidance Automation Toolkit (GAT) to author or customize guidance packages.
• The Guidance Automation Toolkit is an extension to Visual Studio 2005 which allows architects to author rich, integrated user experiences for reusable assets including frameworks, components, and patterns.

Tom Hollander has a post outlining all fixes and improvements of this release but also detailing some known issues. The good thing is that the Extensions now install on Windows Vista with UAC enabled!

At the Developer & IT-Pro Days 2007 Jelle Druyts will be delivering a talk on GAX and GAT: "DEV301 - A Deep Dive Into The Guidance Automation Toolkit". He will be covering following topics:

• Visual Studio Extensibility
• Guidance Automation Toolkit
• GAT Best Practices
• GAT & Software Factories

The good news for the attendees is that Jelle just updated his slide-deck to reflect the changes of the February 2007 CTP releases. So expect an updated talk on GAT and GAX, right after the keynote!