Last week we made the decision to upgrade the Guidance Packages included in the Smart Client Software Factory to a soon to be released version of GAX & GAT.

There are many benefits that weighted in favor of doing this:

  • The new GAX runtime includes fixes for a number of very annoying bugs (most notably those related to non-English versions of VS.NET)
  • New features that enhance the user experience
  • All software factories will use the same GAX runtime and updated GAT, allowing easier “composition” between them

Among the new things you’ll (besides no exceptions if you happen to have VS.NET auf Deutsch for example) is the “Guidance Navigator”, a small window that summarizes the available recipes and templates for a given Guidance Package and provides contextual information. So, now after installing SC-SF and creating a new Smart Client Solution you will see this:

 

It’s a neat addition to the development environment that improves usability.

Now, there are also some consequences of this decision that will affect you:

  • To get this, you’ll have to wait a couple of weeks. We will suspend the weekly drops of SC-SF until it releases at the end of June. Why? Because we still need to stabilize and test it against a component that is not publicly available yet and that we are not directly responsible for.
  • It’s just 3 weeks from now. Besides, we are now in the general stabilization phase for SC-SF, no significant new features will be added to SC-SF on top of what’s already available in the community except: the updated guidance packages, documentation, documentation and documentation
  • When we ship SC-SF you will need ton uninstall any Guidance Packages, GAT 1.0 and GAX 1.0 and reinstall the newer versions
  • Most Guidance Packages will just work with the new version of GAX & GAT, but you might need to do some adjustments. Just as a reference, we needed to adjust ours a little bit (nothing major and will cover that when the time comes)

If you have any questions, do let us know!

More on this in Wojtek's and Tom's blogs. (yes, Wojtek has a blog)