The opinions expressed in these materials are my own and are not necessarily those of Microsoft. Copyright © Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all source code provided is licensed under the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL).
I love data! And, since I am hyper-focused on all things Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server, I love data about our internal usage of the products we sell to our customers. Make no mistake, we are hard-core users of the same technologies we ask you to use. Case in point is the publishing of our internal TFS statistics. You can find all the good data in the great post by Erin Geaney here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/2012/07/23/microsoft-internal-usage-of-tfs-january-june-2012.aspx
Make sure check out the stats so you can get a feel for how we use TFS internally at Microsoft!
The folks at Channel9 have created some video shorts on how to use many of the cool new features in Visual Studio 2012. You will most likely encounter links to the videos for the first time when you look at the “How-To Videos” section of the Start Page:
If you want another path to the videos you can find them all here (sorted by overall rating):
http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Visual-Studio-2012-Premium-and-Ultimate-Overview?sort=rating
Also, links to these videos are now included throughout VS2012 RTM environment. For example, the IntelliTrace Everywhere video is linked inside the IntelliTrace tool window:
Here is the one on IntelliTrace Everywhere video you will see when you click on the link:
Take some time to explore these videos to get insight into ways you can leverage these amazing tools.
I started working with Azure almost five years ago and have been very happy to see it evolve and mature. If you are working with Azure or just learning how to use this offering then you need to start with Clint Edmonson’s “Windows Azure Solution Cookbook” found here:
http://www.notsotrivial.net/blog/post/2012/07/02/Windows-Azure-Solution-Cookbook.aspx
Here is what this is all about in Clint’s own words:
“[…] it’s hard for architects and developers to get a big picture of the Azure platform and how all the features can be used together to build solutions. Microsoft is shipping new services on a quarterly basis and each new service is designed to solve a particular need our customers are asking for. We need a way to see these services holistically as a set of building blocks or ingredients to use in our solutions. […] In this series going to offer up some architectural recipes to help visualize solutions to the common scenarios we’ve identified since Azure’s launch.”
Don’t let the “architecture” word fool you. This is an exceptional view into how you can leverage Azure. For example, here is the overview pic that he provides for working with mobile:
Clint goes into clear, precise explanations about how you can achieve these goals. Make sure you take advantage of this most excellent look into using our latest and greatest Azure features.
Question: Can you upgrade Visual Studio 2012 RC to Visual Studio 2012 RTM?
Short Answer: Yes.
I’ve had several folks ask me about upgrading VS2012 RC to RTM recently. I thought it would be a good idea to review the upgrade paths.
In case you have been living in a cave, we have launched VS2012 RTM already:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/zainnab/archive/2012/08/20/visual-studio-2012-and-windows-8-are-now-available.aspx
Many people think you have to uninstall the RC but that isn’t true. You can find the full compatibility and upgrade information here:
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/products/compatibility
Here are the verbatim pieces most relevant to upgrading with non-RTM information removed for clarity:
===
When following the supported upgrade paths, your Visual Studio source, solution, and project files will continue to work; however, you should expect to make some changes to sources. While we cannot guarantee binary compatibility between releases, we will do our best to document significant changes to assist you with updates.
On the off chance that you have to uninstall the RC you can find the instructions here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2744926
Pay particular attention to the uninstall order if you have multiple VS2012 versions installed. Here is the order (top first, bottom last) to uninstall from the KB article:
For the first time in 25 years we are changing our logo. You can find our more from Jeffrey Meisner’s post here:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2012/08/23/microsoft-unveils-a-new-look.aspx
Just to remind you what the old logo looked like, here it is:
And now (drum roll please) the new logo:
We also have a cool video that shows some of our new logos that you can check out:
On August 13, 2012, Brian Harry announced that the Team Foundation Service (TFS in the Cloud) now has support for Kanban boards:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2012/08/13/introducing-kanban.aspx
Support for on-premise Team Foundation Server 2012 should come with the first update post-RTM.
Here is a video about this new feature:
For those not familiar with Kanban, which was originally created for manufacturing, you can go here for a general overview:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban
As for Kanban and software development, I personally like this session from TechEd 2011:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2011/DPR203
On August 13, 2012, Brian Harry announced our new Team Foundation Server integration with Git. You can find his post here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2012/08/13/announcing-git-integration-with-tfs.aspx
Why did we do it? Well, Brian himself says it best in his post:
“Distributed Version Control (DVCS) has a growing following. It enables a set of workflows that can be very handy and Git is an increasingly popular DVCS solution. Today, we are announcing Git-tf, a solution that enables you to work locally with a Git repo – edit, commit, revert, branch, merge, etc. and then “sync up” with a central TFS repository. In this way, you can have the best of both DVCS and TFS.”
This new effort is an open source one called Git-tf and you can find the project here:
http://gittf.codeplex.com/
The best part is you can run Git-tf on Linux, MacOS, or Windows
Here is a screenshot from the CodePlex site showing usage examples:
If you just want to download the bits and the getting started guide you can go here:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30474
You should also check out this video that shows how the new features work:
If you find yourself having issues you can always check out StackOverflow for any Git-tf tagged items:
(Note: at the time of this writing there was only one entry in there so far)
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/git-tf
The Visual Studio 2012 Virtual Launch Event is coming September 12! Make sure to add this free event to your calendar so you can attend. Just click the Add to Calendar link above to make sure you don’t miss out on some great stuff!
On August 15th we announced the availability of, both, Visual Studio 2012 and Windows 8.
You can find out more on our Visual Studio from Soma’s blog post here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2012/08/15/visual-studio-2012-and-net-4-5-now-available.aspx
For those wanting to get their hands on the goods now here is an excerpt from the post:
For Windows 8, you can get details on the release here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsappdev/archive/2012/08/15/windows-8-rtm-is-available-for-developers.aspx
Here is the relevant part that deals with how to get your hands on the bits:
Depending on what Microsoft programs you or your organization might be part of, there are a few ways to get the RTM version of Windows 8. If you have an MSDN Subscription or a TechNet Professional Subscription, the RTM is available today. For info on other programs see the Windows 8 has reached the RTM milestone post on Windows Team blog.
If you are not part of one of these programs, don’t worry, we’re also offering a 90-day evaluation of the Windows 8 Enterprise edition for developers. This is available now from the Windows Dev Center download page along with Visual Studio Express 2012, Windows 8 design assets, code samples, and all the related tools and SDK’s you need to build apps.
If you use the evaluation version, we recommend installing it on separate drive or partition or in a VM. This way you’ll be able to upgrade from your original OS to the Windows 8 RTM when it becomes available in October. If you don’t, then you’ll need to reinstall from scratch when you decide to move to the full version. Make sure you read all the details on the download page.
Make sure to get your hands on these if you haven’t already and keep looking out for new series on my blog on the new Visual Studio!
Folks,
I'll be on vacation until Aug 6th so there will be no posts until the week after I get back. We will resume our regularly scheduled posts at that point :)
Z