bharry's WebLog

Brian Harry would like your feedback on how and when we do CTPs. Be sure to post comments on his blog!

We've been discussing internally our CTP program and how to improve it. As part of that, we'd like your

I think the new transparency is great.  Monthly (or near monthly) CTPs worked OK.  Some of the disadvantages are synchronizing web content and discussions.  A blog about a feature with its syntax becomes quickly out of date.  The install process is also a pain.

What about distibuting them as virtual PC images in the future?

Brian Harry quer o seu feedback sobre como e quando disponibilizar os CTPs do Visual Studio. ...

In general I really like the CTP process.  Getting drops every month or two is much better than every 6-12 months.  You get feedback that you act on much earlier.  What I don't like is when I have a new CTP of VS that's not compatible with the latest CTP of Windows.  Of course, now that VPC 2007 runs on Vista that isn't as big of a deal.  I think CTPs (dev technology and Windows) should come about every month or two but no faster.  As for TFS, having a CTP of the client side is something we would evaluate on a VPC.  As for the TF server, my guess is that our tech computing group would have no desire to mess with a CTP, Beta or RC.  They're only interested in RTM.  So if there were a way to get a VPC for the server preconfigured such that devs could set it up to evaluate the new client features, that would be best for us.  As for using CTPs, I have downloaded, installed and used just about every Vista CTP.  I have the VS 2005 SP1 CTP/Beta installed on a VPC.  Af for .NET 3.0, I would say that I've installed and played with about every other CTP.  The quality of the CTPs have been pretty good IMO.  As I mentioned, the way CTPs could be made more useful is to keep them in sync with other ongoing CTPs (Vista). Of course at this point, this is no longer an issue.  And provide VPCs when appropriate.  I think a TF Server CTP provide on a VPC would be a good idea.  Same goes for the client side.

After the last few drops , I think every month is too much , but I agree with Keith more frequent than 6-12 months. Depite saying that the CTP program is working well from my point of view.

thanks

CTPs, or Community Technology Previews ( Team System Community Technology Previews (CTPs) ), were borne

I downloaded the previous CTP to test .net 3.0 and the new forms designer there, but unfortunately it was not integrated yet.

Then I was looking for performance improvements, but I couldn’t find any, I was looking for more powerful refactoring, like merging namespaces for example, and that one is not there either.

I was looking for a better ways to diff code inside VS.NET and that one is not there, I was looking for a lot of things that would have made my life easier, and it was not in any of the CTPs by now :-)

What I want from the next CTP is also more powerful IDE, not just small add-ins and power toys that decreases the VS performance when you install many of them, I am looking for some fundamental changes, think namespaces, classes, functions, and content, not just solution files and folders :-)

The improvements in C# are nice by the way :-)

I'm usually fortunate enough to be in a position where I can use a new technology in a 'production' environment. We've been using TFS for real source control and work item tracking for about a year and a half. CTPs have little interest to me, since they usually come with many caveats and don't always play nicely with other prerelease technologies. For TFS, I recall that most of the CTPs required a dual server install, which was just impossible for me to switch to.

In March, we started a new project that uses WCF heavily (about 15 different processes that use WCF for comm). We started with the FebCTP (no real other choice, considering the major changes that FebCTP had). From there we went to B2 then RC1 then RTM. We can't spend time looking at a new CTP every month and prefer a slightly more stable (or at least compatible) release, even if that means a longer wait.

However, on the client side, if the CTPs were coordinated across multiple groups (so they wouldn't have some complex compatibility matrix), then it'd be much more feasible to deploy them every 2-3 months.

And please, please give the CTP names something more than a month. Either a sequential number or month and year would be useful when searching for information.

My main feedback is that I don't like CTP releases that are VPC only.  My preference is to load up the CTP on my development workstation without the hassle of VPC.  I recognize that other probably prefer the VPC image, and so I guess my suggestion would be to always supply both.

I'm willing to look at CTP releases every 1-2 months.

Brain Harry wants to know. We've always had a concern about the quality of the CTPs we release, but are

CTPs should be replaced with builds seeded to a package management infrastructure. Looking at Microsoft from a heterogeneous POV, there are many things wrong, but the most obvious is the horrific mess that is MSI and how builds are deployed. Once you've used a great package management system (I'm thinking Ubuntu/dpkg here) you'll understand.

I mean, I've been installing builds of the .Net framework since August 2000. I recently tried to install .Net framework 3 (gold) and struggled with the both hangs in the installer and not knowing whether the "vista SDK" applied to WinXP or not (it did). If this was any one of a number of great package management systems, I'd have simply chosen the VS.Net IDE extensions for .Net v3 from a list, and it would have auto-installed the .Net v3 runtime and the .Net v3 SDK without me having to hunt around the web for the correct dependancies.

And it's not just me. Even Charles Petzold seemed to be confused:

http://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/2006/11/080248.html

And this is for a released product!

Please deploy a package management server and BITS/download managers become a hidden bit of infrastructure. Not something that your average user needs to know about.

I'm still a little fuzzy on the difference between CTP and Beta, is it simply frequency and level of regression testing?  Or, are there different processes to collecting and processing feedback?  Whenever I've provided feedback on CTPs or Betas the response has always been "Great, but that will have to wait until vNext.".  At this point, the only difference I can see is arbitrary frequency.

Regardless of whether it's Beta or CTP I think it's vital to have VPC drops.  If there's also a desire to install without VPC, install packages could be provided as well.  I just don't have a spare machine that I'm willing to risk trashing because a CTP/Beta had a problem and I don't have support; but I do want to provide feedback.

Overall, I enjoy the CTP process -- however I more enjoy distinct sets of releases than bundles of apps such as found in the VS SDK as stuff like IronPython, VSTA and VS PowerToys shouldn't require me to download a bulky package.

For large 'Systems' of CTPs, such as Orcas, I really enjoy the VHD approach as I can simply get the VHD and start using the CTP very quickly without having to deal with installation issues. Kudos to relasing VHD's. Personally, I don't care about having a non-VPC image version of things like Orcas, since I'd rather eat the pain of having VPC shared folders to store my data rather than the hassle of installing/uninstalling CTP bits (which causes headache to no end.)

One of the original tenants of the CTP program was that releasing a CTP shouldn't distract from the ultimate release of the product. I hope this is still true, and even more so I hope an effort is being made for release cycles to be shortened. To pull the marketing slogan 'Doing more with less' -- In my case, 'less' means less time. I hope that Microsoft can somehow shorten their development times to accommodate my reduction in development times. Go-live CTPs are an example of helping with this problem, but I hope development cycles can be ultimately reduced.

Dear Microsoft.

I'm gratefull for the CTP as well as for the Betas.

We all should lean back and applaud every bit of knowledge, that MS can and will share before the product RTM his our system.

Everything that we can grow to understand in advance and during the development phase of a new product will prepares us for a later release.

So pls keep CTP's coming every month with a list of changes, do's and don'ts, working and broken....

I personally love the idea of vpc drops, BUT in real life we all have a bunch of other products that clutter our dev environment, and it is equally important to try the product in our everyday environment.

Regards

Jens Chr

One thing I liked about you releasing CTPs is that it enabled the community, especially Microsoft employees, to talk about the features.  Under the old way of doing things, betas and early adopter builds were covered under NDA.

A great example is the CTP's of LINQ.  I first saw demos at PDC 2005, and there is plenty of info on the web about it.  We're looking at the architecture for the V Next+1 version of one of our products and our thinking about V Next+1 influences the steps we take in the V Next release.  By the time we're ready to code +1, LINQ will be shipping.  And BTW, I'll confess I haven't yet installed a CTP of LINQ but I benefit because the people posting code samples have!

As an ISV, the downside of all these CTPs is that it makes it extremely difficult for us to support a technology you haven't RTM'ed.  In the old days, we could ship a beta that supported one of your betas and life was good.  Now, by the time we've QA'ed our stuff against one of your builds, you've released yet another one.   We don't know if our stuff still works until we do a full QA pass, at which point there is little time left (shelf life) before the next CTP comes out.

I don't think there is a silver bullet here.  My gut feel is that the benefits to all of us (ISVs included) of the openness of CTPs outweighs the difficulties of 3rd party support for CTPs.

 KC

Without question it is critical for Microsoft to release CTP for all of your products (Windows, Office, VS, etc).  

People just need to understand the classic statement that beta code is beta code.  Expect that it will be buggy and not compatible with future versions, even if there is a go-live license.  The key is not to use them with business critical operations and you don't have to try each one, but the beauty is that there are a lot of other people that will try it and provide feedback on the ones you missed.

The once a month CTP program is great, but if you miss a month than is fine too, but when I don't hear from you I know that you are having major problems with the product and had to go back to the drawing board and probably embarrassed to show it ;)

I don't think Vista would have ever launched if it were not for the CTP program.  

CTP are always welcome and an unvaluable resource to test new programs and to be ready for the RTMs. Don't stop the release.

I am loving MS new found transparency. I would agree that one a month/2 month is the ideal relasing frequency.

Altough I am not liking this whole VPC image thing because VS is runninh reallu slow in my VM.

Brian Harry on Pretty Cool TFS Add On and Feedback on VS Community Technology Previews CTPs. Rob Caron...

Well, my wife doesn't like the CTP program because she thinks I spend too much time in front of the computer already. :-)

But, yes, I like the CTPs, every month or every two months is just great! I am hoping for more on ADO.NET Orcas and LINQ in general in the next CTP of Orcas. My Internet line does not fancy the recent VPC's, but it is easier and faster to test the bits and it is without messing up my registry. Pros and cons...

Suggestion, could you add the samples to the VPC so that I don't have to download them separately?

I need to get this off my chest, the new context menu item in Solution Explorer "Open in Windows Explorer" is fantastic! I never knew that I needed it, but I seem to be looking for it in VS2005, maybe I should create an add-in for VS2005... :-)