What's new with the VSX team
Our team released a beta of our next version of the VS SDK this week, more details the VS SDK section below. We will release the final version of VS SDK 2008 SDK 1.1 when the final release of SP1 for VS 2008 is released later this year. As mentioned last month, the VSX team is working on a parallel project developing a new major version of the VS SDK that is targeted for CTP beta sometime next year. This new future new version of the VS SDK will include additional features and design tools for extending VS to make VSX easier as well as more powerful.
Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 Beta available Microsoft recently released beta downloads of the Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1. Below are various downloads related to the SP1 betas online for VS and the VS Shell:
Additional details about the VS Shell SP1 beta runtime updates can be found in Quan To's blog post these downloads:
The integrated shell is a subset of the main Visual Studio patch and only targets the Integrated Shell. If you have any edition of Visual Studio Standard and above, and also have the Integrated Shell installed, you should only install the main Visual Studio patch. If you don't have any Visual Studio 2008 editions installed and just have the integrated shell, install the integrated shell patch and save yourself about 60 extra megabytes. The Isolated Shell release is a major upgrade. It will uninstall the previous RTM version and install the latest Isolated Shell Beta on your machine. That means it's not a patch but a full version of the Isolated Shell. For those who worked with the Integrated and Isolated shells back in November, you'll notice a significant size reduction in the redists. The main size reduction knocking out about 150 megabytes is the .NET Framework redist. Instead of carrying the entire payload, we're carrying a small bootstrapper that will go and download the Framework if you don't have it on your machine. If you do, it just by passes that part of the install and moves onto installing the other pieces. All these installs will not affect previous version of Visual Studio so if you have Visual Studio 2002, 2003, or 2005, it is safe to apply these patches to your Visual Studio 2008 install.
The integrated shell is a subset of the main Visual Studio patch and only targets the Integrated Shell. If you have any edition of Visual Studio Standard and above, and also have the Integrated Shell installed, you should only install the main Visual Studio patch. If you don't have any Visual Studio 2008 editions installed and just have the integrated shell, install the integrated shell patch and save yourself about 60 extra megabytes.
The Isolated Shell release is a major upgrade. It will uninstall the previous RTM version and install the latest Isolated Shell Beta on your machine. That means it's not a patch but a full version of the Isolated Shell.
For those who worked with the Integrated and Isolated shells back in November, you'll notice a significant size reduction in the redists. The main size reduction knocking out about 150 megabytes is the .NET Framework redist. Instead of carrying the entire payload, we're carrying a small bootstrapper that will go and download the Framework if you don't have it on your machine. If you do, it just by passes that part of the install and moves onto installing the other pieces.
All these installs will not affect previous version of Visual Studio so if you have Visual Studio 2002, 2003, or 2005, it is safe to apply these patches to your Visual Studio 2008 install.
Visual Studio 2008 SDK 1.1 Beta available
Yesterday we released the latest version of the VS 2008 SDK which targets the new VS 2008 SP1 Beta:
Note: Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 Beta is required to be installed to use the Visual Studio 2008 SDK 1.1 Beta.
Here are the highlights of what is new and updated since the VS 2008 SDK 1.0 since our RTM release include:
The Readme for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SDK 1.1 Beta can be found online posted on Quan To's blog, the same readme document included in the SDK beta download. Test engineer jobs available on the VSX team
The VSX team is hiring! We have several positions open, one for a test lead as well as several individual testers for our QA (Quality Assurance) team.
VSX at events Some of our team members including Quan To, Mariano Blanco, and Gearard Boland will be at TechEd in June, so if you are at that event he first week of June, be sure to stop by the VSX station in the Microsoft learning center to talk to them. VSX Tour - Spring 2008 in Europe Our team members James Lau and Jean-Marc Prieur are on a community event tour in Europe over the next 3 weeks. Stay tuned to James' blog for event news and summaries during and after the tour.
VS extension tip of the month This month, the extension tip is about the XML tools included in Visual Studio 2008, as well as the brand new XML Schema Explorer added to SP1 of Visual Studio 2008. For more details, check out the XML Team's blog post with details and a screenshots: New XSD Functionality in Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta 1 This new utility, created by the Data Programmability team within Microsoft using the VS SDK, was discussed in the article in our VSX CoDe Focus magazine issue written by Chris Lovett: How XML Tools Use the Visual Studio SDK
For more on XML tools in VS 2008, Stan Kitsis, program manager on the Data Programmability at Microsoft, has an article for CoDe magazine that is now online: XML Tools in Visual Studio 2008:
New deep dives for PowerCommands on LearnVSXNow! István Novák continues his series of VSX related educational content he calls LearnVSXNow! with new deep dives for the free PowerCommands extension for VS.
VSX topic now on Wikipedia The VSX community has created a new VSX topic page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VSX. We look forward to seeing how the community evolves this wiki page. VSX book now available at Microsoft Company Store The Microsoft company store now stocks the Professional Visual Studio Extensibility, which is significant since only select technical books are stocked in the Microsoft Company Store in Redmond for Microsoft employees. We find that there is a growing number of VSX developers within Microsoft outside the VSX team, with various product teams extending VS for either internal use or for parts of various products based on the VS platform.
Next month In next month's letter, we will have more news from the team, additional VSX content online, some significant news about a special VSX event later this year, and new phase 2 features for the Visual Studio Gallery website including RSS support, tagging, comments, and more. Please send your feedback to us via the Contact link on any of our team member blogs, or post a technical question in the MSDN Forum for VSX. You can also email me directly at klevy@microsoft.com or using the Email link on my blog. VSX Survey (Spring 2008) invitation
Please take a few minutes and complete the VSX Survey (Spring 2008) to let us know your interests, activities, and feedback on the topic of extending Visual Studio.
There are 6 web pages with 23 multiple choice and fill-in-the blank questions in this survey. This is our second VSX survey, as we plan to offer a similar survey every 6 months and track the trends from the results. So if you took our VSX survey last fall, it's important to us that you take this survey with similar or updated answers and feedback.
Visual Studio is a rich extensible platform. As more and more developers continue to build extensions, the VSX team wants to ensure we are focusing on the right priorities for VSX developers. Your response will help Microsoft provide improved features and tools for extending Visual Studio and enhance the overall Visual Studio platform and ecosystem.
Ken Levy Program Manager Visual Studio Tools Ecosystem Microsoft http://blogs.msdn.com/klevy http://msdn.com/vsx