VS SDK Code Name "Orcas" June CTP Released!

ddubey — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 00:58:00 GMT

The VS SDK team released the latest VS SDK targeting Visual Studio Orcas Beta 1 last week. You can download it from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=1C99A9C8-ADFC-4DE6-8B9E-2A5C6B540332&displaylang=en.

This SDK exposes the Run As Normal User (RANU) feature for the first time. When the Visual Studio SDK is installed on a computer, a user with non-administrator permissions can now create a package by using the wizard, and then press F5 to open the new package in the experimental hive. There are a few issues in the platform that causes the devenv /setup action to fail so you might still have to be an admin on the box but the registry re-direction is implemented and the packlages registration happens under HKCU when RANU is used. These issues in the platform are being fixed for BETA 2 release.

There were also some changes to DSL Tools. These include new path editing. In DSL Tools, paths are used in a DSL definition to specify diagram element maps and explorer behavior. This CTP adds richer path editing to the DSL Designer, in the form of a drop-down tree control. You can now either type the path syntax, or you can display a tree view of all the valid paths from the current starting point.

Also, with the current release of the CTP, we have removed the Release month, for example 2007.04, from the SDK folder structure and “Microsoft” was added to the VS SDK shortcut and root folder name.

Thanks

Deep

RANU Package Development

ddubey — Wed, 09 May 2007 00:37:00 GMT

Today I want to talk about RANU for Package development. RANU stands for Run as Normal user. In Orcas VS SDK, we are providing package developers the ability to create packages as a normal user. Package developers do not need to be administrators on the development box. This was the requirement in VS 2005 SDK since the packages were registered in the experimental VS hive under HKLM.

In Orcas SDKs we will provide the ability to use HKCU as the package registrative hive for package development purposes. There is a new switch added to devnev.exe /RANU. This switch launches VS and uses the hive under HKCU. In the VS SDK, the vsregx tool will be updated to create experimental hive under HKCU. Regpkg.exe tool will be updated to register packages under HKCU. The VS SDK samples build tasks will be uodated to use the regpkg.exe that registers the package in the HKCU experimental hive.

RANU does not enable package deployment under HKCU though. You will continue to deploy VS packages under the HKLM hive of VS. For this purpose we continue to give the ability to use HKLM for package development. You would need to create the experimental hive in HKLM manually using the vsregx tool and modify the build task on the sample in SDK to register the package under HKLM.

These changes are currently not in the VS SDK BETA 1 CTP targeting Orcas. We hope to provide this functionality in the next CTP of VS SDK.

Deep's Weblog : ranu

VS SDK Code Name "Orcas" June CTP Released!

RANU Package Development