Visual Studio 2008 release

Since the beginning of this summer there have been a rumour that Visual Studio 2008 will be released in november. Yesterday on a keynote at TechEd in Barcelona it become official that Visual Studio 2008 and .Net Framework 3.5 will be released on MSDN in november.

Acropolis August CTP (VS 2008 Beta2 Refresh) Release available now

Now you can download Acropolis August CTP (VS 2008 Beta2 Refresh) Release. As the team writes on their blog "This release is mainly an update so that our customers can continue to evaluate “Acropolis” with the latest VS 2008 Beta".

Orcas Beta 2

I have installed Orcas Beta 2 on one of my machines, just to test the installation and to do some testing running fx2.0 stuff etc. I have tried it out and I was going to installed it on my main computer to use the Beta 2 as my only Visual Studio. Then I found this post about that the Beta 2 crashes like crazy. I think I'll wait with the installation...

VS 2008 multi targeting Support

I installed Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 yesterday. There was no problem to install the program and this version works fine together with VS 2005 on the same machine.

When you open a 2005 solution in 2008 a wizard will perform an upgrade of the project files and the solution file. After the wizard was finished I checked the new solution file and compared it with the old one. There was one changed row.

The first row in the old solution file:Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 9.00# Visual Studio 2005

The first row in the new solution file:Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 10.00# Visual Studio 2008.NET 3.5 project file

The project files were the same. As you know VS 2008 has a multi targeting support. If you want to be able to run the same code in both VS 2005 and VS 2008 you can create a new solution file for VS 2008 and keep the old solution file for VS 2005. Only remember to update both files when you add or remove a project.

You can see what framework you use in the project files. Compare these two parts of a project file for the same win form project.

.NET 3.5 project file

<ItemGroup>
<Reference Include="System" />
<Reference Include="System.Core">
<RequiredTargetFramework>3.5</RequiredTargetFramework>
</Reference>
<Reference Include="System.Xml.Linq">
<RequiredTargetFramework>3.5</RequiredTargetFramework>
</Reference>
<Reference Include="System.Data.DataSetExtensions">
<RequiredTargetFramework>3.5</RequiredTargetFramework>
</Reference>
<Reference Include="System.Data" />
<Reference Include="System.Deployment" />
<Reference Include="System.Drawing" />
<Reference Include="System.Windows.Forms" />
<Reference Include="System.Xml" />
</ItemGroup>

.NET 2.0 project file

<ItemGroup> <Reference Include="System" /> <Reference Include="System.Data" /> <Reference Include="System.Deployment" /> <Reference Include="System.Drawing" /> <Reference Include="System.Windows.Forms" /> <Reference Include="System.Xml" /> </ItemGroup>

You got the RequiredTargetFramework to specify the versions of the references. Clever.

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 and .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2 is released now

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 and .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2 is released now. You can download it here. Read more about the new features etc in this post from Scott Guthrie.

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2

If you read the comments for Scott Guthrie's post about "VS 2008 Nested Master Page Support" you can read...

"Monday, July 09, 2007 10:30 AM by ScottGu
Hi Andreas,
VS 2008 Beta2 should be available for free download in the next three weeks. It will support a go-live license.
Thanks,
Scott"

So it's not so long before we can test out the Beta 2....

Launch date for Visual Studio 2008

On the worldwide partner conferense Kevin Turner, chief operating officer, presented the launch dates for Visual Studio 2008. "Turner announced that Windows Server® 2008, Visual Studio® 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server™ 2008 will launch together at an event in Los Angeles on Feb. 27, 2008, kicking off hundreds of launch events around the world. " Read more here.

VS 2008 Multi Targeting Support

I think this is so cool. The new Visual Studio 2008 has support for multi targeting. This meens that you can create solutions for .NET framework 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5 in this IDE. Check out this post from Scott Guthrie about it.