Orcas and Visual Studio 2005: So happy together...

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Well, unless you've had your head buried in endless code and don't ever come up for air, you know that Visual Studio Codename "Orcas" BETA 1 is out, and you have two choices:

1) Download all the pieces for a VPC installation and run it in a VM, or
2) Download the iso image and install it on the machine proper.

I've never been enamored of number 1; I just don't like the feeling of running something in a virtual machine and dealing with all the memory and other issues; and besides, I want to really test this thing out and the best way to do that, in my book, is to take the plunge.

Now of course the question becomes -- is it going to be happy with being on the same OS as Visual Studio 2005, and vice-versa? For me, the answer is "yes". So far I have noticed nothing unusual at all. Each guy acts like he knows nothing about the other, and as far as I'm concerned, that's perfectly fine with me! They do mention prominently that when you uninstall Orcas BETA 1, you may need to perform a repair on Visual Studio 2005. No biggie.

The other issue you'll run into is a technology issue: when you download that big 5,585,460 KB iso image, you may get the feeling that it just might have some difficulty fitting onto a 4 GB DVD... and, of course, you'd be right. It's a UDF file system. That means WinISO or WinRar arent' gonna be able to see the files. Unless you've got the licensed version of ISOBuster, he won't let you extract them either.

So! You can't burn it to a DVD, and you can't extract the files, so what do you do? Well, you download Daemon Tools, which is free, and you mount the ISO on a virtual DVD drive!

Orcas will install perfectly when you use this technique, since, at least to Orcas, it's exactly where it is supposed to be - on a DVD! On the only reboot, it tried to continue before Daemon Tools had completely come up and remounted, but a few seconds later a click on the Retry button did the trick.

I should hasten to add that this is a very long install since there is a whole buncha stuff that gets installed. I recommend using the custom option so you can deselect stuff you know you can do without (in my case that would be Crystal Reports and Dotfuscator Community Edition.) The single reboot came very soon after the beginning, so as soon as you take care of that you can go out and get yourself a nice spaghetti dinner and some wine with the Significant Other and show them that you, erm, actually do "have a life"...

Orcas, by the way, was named after Orcas Island, which is right off the coast of Washington State. Have fun! Orc, Orc! And now, eine kleine LINQ with some lambda expressions!
Peter has been active on the C# and other MS newsgroups, has had samples at gotdotnet.com (now codegallery.com) that have been downloaded over 56,000 times, and has written numerous articles for eggheadcafe.com, for which he is a co-founder, and MSDNAA sites. He has also been a technical reviewer on books from Prentice Hall, Manning and other publishers. Peter was a Microsoft MVP for 10 years. Peter was born and raised in New York City, and after a stint as a jazz musician playing contrabass with the Robert Hunt Trio, migrated to sunny Florida, where he was hired as a rookie Financial Consultant at Merrill Lynch in Orlando, specializing in Corporate Services. It was at Merrill that Peter realized computers and technology were his forte. He spent his last few years at Merrill developing real – time computerized trading and and stock charting program using advanced technical analysis indicators, some of which are his own inventions. In 1997, he moved on to architect and serve as lead developer on a number of innovative web-based and middleware solutions for the healthcare and financial services industry.

Comments

  1. Anonymous7:48 AM

    Isn't it technically the CTP? Or did BETA 1 actually come out and I missed the announcement?

    ReplyDelete
  2. peterbromberg9:27 AM

    Its' Beta 1, and it's up on MSDN subscriber downloads.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Kevin5:08 PM

    Hey Peter, I no longer have access to the MSDN subscriber downloads, is there another location to download the Orca?

    Aloha,

    Kevin

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous10:47 AM

    Some time ago I had a problem with Daemon Tools, as uninstalling it removed my dvd drives from the system. Since then I'm keeping my distance from this package.

    ReplyDelete

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