Last week, we published the Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate.  Since then we’ve seen a strong positive reports from customers about their experience so far with the release. 

I meet with a team of about 20 folks every morning to review the latest feedback from a variety of sources and discuss the latest trends and responses.  We look at install data indicating a strong demand and high install success rate.  We look at the satisfaction survey (if you haven’t taken it yet, please do) which gives us both a quantitative as well as qualitative feel for how things are going.  We also look at Twitter (please use the #vs2010 hashtag), top rated bugs from Connect, responses to key blogs (including those from Soma, Scott, Jason and Brian) and Forum participation (ALM, VS Pro, and .NET). All of this helps me get a good sense of how we’re doing and where we need to spend time addressing before we release our final version. 

So far, the response has been very encouraging. Here are some representative comments:

• Just tried VS2010 RC. One word incredible. Super fast, great build with things I saw in earlier releases fixed. So awesome.
• First impressions: Fast builds,clean,no hangs, fast intellisense,better font rendering.
• Congratulations for the RC Milestone, #VS2010seems pretty more snapier, also looks more fine-grained like an finished product!
• VS2010 RC: I must admit, I am impressed. Major speed and performance improvements. They are obvious immediately!
• Trying out VS2010 RC: Snappier UI, much faster intellisense, significant build time reduction, etc. Overall: AWESOME JOB!
• VS 2010 RC performance is ridiculously faster, can't wait to switch over full time!
• Oh my goodness, VS2010 RC is much, much faster. Kudos to the VS perf team and everyone else. Uninstalling Visual Studio 2008 :-)
• #vs2010 is fast like ambulances flying through a school zone at 120 mph being chased by ninjas. and the ninjas are on fire!
• Very speedy to load projects and compile. Fast to move through the IDE. a VAST improvement over Beta 2
• It's become a lot faster, feels faster as well. I love the improvement you made from BETA1 to BETA2 to RC.
• As far as I've tested it, performance is absolutely awesome. It was my biggest concern in Beta2, but right now it seems as fast as VS2008, or even better.

Through this we’ve also identified a few issues including:

• Upgrading from Beta2 – Before installing the RC, you’ll need to uninstall the Beta2 version.  Aaron has posted a blog article covering this in a bit more detail. 
• Corrupt DVD ISO downloads – some customers are encountering issues with corrupt DVD ISO files after downloading. Heath Stewart from our deployment team has written a good blog article on this issue.
• Intellisense crashes – some customers are are encountering frequent VS 2010 crashes when typing in the editor while Intellisense is popping up and/or being dismissed.  We’ve published a patch to this problem which you should apply immediately.  You can read more about it here.  Let us know if it doesn’t help address your problem. 
• Silverlight 4 support - We will be adding VS 2010 RC support for SL4 with the next public Silverlight 4 drop. If you are doing active Silverlight 4 development today we recommend staying with the VS10 Beta 2 build for now. 
• Express availability – we did not provide any of the Express versions of VS with the release candidate.  All the features are available in the drops we’ve included.  Express editions will be sim-shipped at RTM.  It was just easier for drop logistics to limit the number of SKU’s we posted.
• Mobile tools support - as with Beta2, the RC does not include Mobile support. While Visual Studio 2010 doesn’t contain built-in mobile support, we are working closely with the Mobile team to deliver support for mobile development to VS 2010 developers in the future.

If you haven’t already, please take this opportunity to download, install and begin using the VS2010 RC.  If you plan to ‘go live’ with this build, please read my article on this.  If you have installed please take a few moments to submit your thoughts on our survey. 

Thanks for helping us ship a great Visual Studio 2010 release.

Jeff

We are pleased to declare that the Release Candidate of Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4 will be supported as a “go live” release. This means that VS2010 RC has met high standards of quality for pre-release software, and we are licensing it for developing and deploying production applications.

We hope that you will consider using VS2010 RC for “go live” production purposes. As you use the release, we want to hear from you at our Connect site if you find any bugs.

In order to decide whether or not using VS2010 in a “go live” scenario is right for you, you should carefully understand the terms and limitations of the “go live” license. Start by reading the license terms for VS2010 RC, which includes the official “go live” licensing terms.

VS2010 RC is licensed for use through June 30, 2010 at which point you’ll need to upgrade to the final release to continue using the product.

The following guidelines should also help you understand the ways in which we are committed to helping you have a great experience with VS2010.

• We are committed to providing a smooth upgrade path from Beta 2 to RC and then to the final release (“RTM”) of Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4. For Team Foundation Server, this means moving data from Team Foundation Server 2008 to Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2 and then eventually to Team Foundation Server 2010 RTM. Most importantly this means source code, work items, tests, builds and the warehouse.
• We give you permission to use VS2010 to create applications using runtimes which are “go live.” For example, the .NET Framework 4 is “go live” for this release and you can create applications both for internal use and external use. See the license terms for more details, including pre-release notifications and other details for distribution.
• Our Support team is staffed to help support VS2010 if you encounter problems. If you plan to use the release for “go live” please send email to vsgolive@microsoft.com so that we can register you for beta level support. If you already obtained an Access ID for VS2010 Beta 2, it remains valid moving forward as you upgrade to VS2010 RC. 
• Another option for requesting assistance is to visit MSDN Forums. The MSDN Forums are frequented by Microsoft MVP’s and members of the product group, and are a great place to search for issues submitted by others which might match problems you encounter.
• You should take adequate measures to back up and protect your data prior to upgrading to the RC. You should also have an ongoing data backup and protection plan in place during your use of VS2010.

Thank you again for your ongoing commitment to Visual Studio and the .NET Framework. With your assistance and ongoing feedback we can ship the best release ever!

Some of you might have noticed the tidal wave of shipping that happened last week. The Rangers have done it again and this time in impressive style with five detailed guides in advance of the VS2010 and TFS2010 releases:

• Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance: consists of compact cheat sheets for Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 and Visual Studio (VS) 2010, addressing the core problem of teams in the field who are unaware of Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server capabilities or have little time to invest in detailed education.
• Visual Studio 2010 TFS Upgrade Guide: covers scenarios which may be encountered during and after the upgrade process. It provides examples of most common and potential issues. It covers scenarios related to general Upgrade Process, Work Item Templates, Reports, and Enterprise TFS Management (ETM).
• Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Branching Guide 2010: Branching and merging of software is a very large topic. It is an area where there is a lot of maturity in the software industry. This Ranger solution focuses on applied and practical examples of branching that you can use right now. The 2010 release includes discussions around branching concepts and strategies but also focuses on practical hands-on labs.
• Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server Requirements Management Guidance: Requirements Engineering (RE) using Team Foundation Server. We provide formalized Microsoft field experience in the form of recommended procedures and processes, Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server configurations, and skill development references for the Requirements Engineering discipline of your application lifecycle.
• Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 VM Factory: prescriptive guidance around the virtualization of the Visual Studio 2010 and guidance for full automation of the creation of virtual machines. We help users with the installation and configuration of virtualized environments with least effort and maximum automation.

Each one of these projects was chosen in part due to field and customer demand and were directly informed by practical experience from MCS consultants and MVPs involved in the projects. As such, they’re field tested and customer ready materials available in advance of the product release. Follow the links above for more details on each of the releases.

When we started the Ranger program 4 years ago, we had the simple vision of accelerating the adoption of Team System but at the time we were playing catch up with a v1 product already in market so we were left trying to fill in the gaps. Now, we’re gearing up to release a v3 product and the Rangers are running ahead of the release laying the groundwork with customers and the field ensuring that everyone gets off to a running start. It’s a much better place to be and I can only imagine where we’ll be 4 years from now!

Congratulations to all involved and especially to Bijan and Willy for their undying dedication to the Ranger mission.

jeff

Martin Woodward and Mickey Gousset called me at home a few days ago to talk about Visual Studio, TFS and the upcoming year much like they did last year. Take a listen to our interview here.  It’s always a great pleasure to chat with these guys about some of my favorite topics. 

Happy new year!

Last week we shipped Beta 2 for broad distribution.  Many of you have already sent us comments and improvement suggestions (thanks!)

At this point we are down to our final set of bug fixing, perf tuning, etc.  We’re very interested in your feedback so we can take action on it before we ship the final version.  To help make it easy, you can take this simple survey.

One thing in particular we are hearing a lot of feedback on is performance.  We are working hard on the next round of perf improvements.  You can supply your feedback through the survey.  When you give us your feedback, the more actionable you can make it the better.  We need to know what operations you are doing (like editing, debugging, etc), what kind of hardware you have (CPU, RAM, disk), and your hosting scenario (main machine, running in VM, terminal server, etc).

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

Jeff