Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta: Experience Speaks.

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A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation. -- Saki

Dear Microsoft:

Well, you know the drill. Somasegar has this great post promoting VS 2008 SP1 beta, and it almost sounds like it's too good to be true, yes? I figured I'd give it a shot -- all the supposed new features sound so promising... The "Readme" is very detailed, and it outlines a whole bunch of failure scenarios, workarounds, and caveats. Just take a look at this stuff:

Important This beta release is for early testing and feedback. As a beta release, we recommend you only install the service pack on test computers. Prior to installation, you should carefully review the included readme file to be aware of any known issues with this release. For example, this service pack has some known compatibility issues with previous releases, including:

  • Expression Blend (all versions)
  • Silverlight 2 Beta 1 SDK
  • Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008

Test computers? Somasegar has this blog post with a big feature-laden sales pitch, then this? Guys, this is too complicated. I'm already developing Silverlight, and using Expression Blend a little bit. Bottom line? Keep your powder dry d00d! Its like, KTHXBYE on this one. This puppy ain't ready for delivery yet. I don't mind being a guinea pig once in a while, but this thing just came up with "FAILED" at the very, very end (that's after I read the notes and unistalled Silverlight tools BETA and the KB hotfix as directed). The problem is, the log file they give you is so damned hierarchically cryptic, I just haven't got the time to go through this bullshit!

One thing was nice: Visual Studio 2008 still works OK after this punishment, and as long as I can get the hotfix and the Silverlight crap reinstalled, I should be able to get back to first base and keep developing.

N.B.: I tried, but it looks like for the non-production machine I tried this on, I am gonna have to take everything out one Saturday morning, reinstall Visual Studio 2008, the Hotfix, and the SilverlightChainer 2 Beta 1 stuff just to get back to first base. I could kick myself for suckering for this stuff, man! I should know better by now.

N.B.(2): Well, actually it wasn't that bad. The trick was to load Silverlight_Chainer.exe into WinRar and extract everything to a folder. Then I was able to uninstall the KB now that I had the .msp on the hard drive, and re-run Silverlight_Chainer and get everything back to normal.

It just goes to show ya - BETA - is BETA, man. So -- you guys go ahead and figure this stuff out, and let me know when I can install it and it won't blow up.

(Reader, comment me and let me know if you had a better - or worse - result).

Thanks,

Peter

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. Anonymous8:17 PM

    Pete,

    All the MS blogs I read recommended installing this on a VM... which I would've thought would be a no-brainer since you surely wouldn't be deploying this stuff to a production server. Try it on a VM with a fresh RTM install?

    ReplyDelete
  2. peterbromberg8:29 PM

    Why should I go through all the pain just to be able to use visual studio 2008 with the service pack and have to run it on a VM? When its ready for prime time, I'll install it. It's not ready -- at least not on the machine I tried it on. Come on.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous9:51 PM

    The point of releasing a beta, at least from what I understand, is to allow people to try out the fixes and new features, and get feedback on it, before it goes RTM. I don't believe the intention ever was "hey, install this on your primary dev box and use it until the RTM comes".

    ReplyDelete
  4. XIU3:38 AM

    Just installed it (made a restore point just to be sure) and no problems at all :) working fine and the new features are awesome!

    ReplyDelete
  5. peterbromberg6:10 AM

    @dan,
    I know what BETAS are for, and I didn't try to install it on my primary development box, just one at home. I have gone through this stuff enough times to know that if a BETA doesn't install for me so I can use it (along with whatever expected glitches there may be), then I am just going to wait. I'm not going to install it on a VM or some backup box and move all my development efforts over to that one just to be able to try out a beta. Been there.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Kevin11:53 AM

    Thank god I live in Hawaii. I woke up this morning to read your experiences. Thanks for the advice

    ReplyDelete
  7. peterbromberg12:04 PM

    @Kevin,
    Some poeple are able to install this and it works fine, so don't take my report as the Gospel. I just have gotten to the point where I don't have the time to fiddle with this junk anymore until I know all the bugs are out of it.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Rick Strahl1:31 PM

    If you think about having a BETA of a Service Pack is a pretty pathetic thing in the first place.

    Of course, BETA and SP doesn't mean the same thing it used to anyway. We live in perpetual beta and Service Packs are more like point releases that do anything BUT service the existing tool (especially this one looking at the extensive new features added).

    Maybe that's a good thing, but more and more it just feels like a tread mill that goes around and around the same track.

    I'm holding out for release this time... let somebody else bleed for a change.

    ReplyDelete
  9. peterbromberg1:56 PM

    heh. Amen, Bro'.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous2:11 PM

    @Rick...

    I don't think it is pathetic at all. In fact, I'm very happy with the way the .NET team is handling their releases. I think it's great that we get betas, futures, CTPs and whatever else to hack and bang away at before they're actually released.

    People like to throw around the term "perpetual beta", and there are certainly companies and software teams that abuse the term "beta", but I don't consider .NET one of them. Look at how far the framework has come since it first came out. We've been blessed with a very steady and increasingly consistent cycle of releases, not to mention the exponentially increasing awesomeness of the features those releases include.

    Honestly, what do you have to complain about?

    ReplyDelete
  11. peterbromberg2:25 PM

    @Dan,
    I think Rick makes a valid point - that the definitions of what a CTP / Preview is vs what a Service Pack is have become blurred over the last couple years. I have no issue with CTPs / previews, I like them just as you do. But a Service Pack (at least in my mind) is a very different animal. Its supposed to mostly fix stuff that was broken more than introducing new features.

    ReplyDelete

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