The entire blogosphere is buzzing over this release. I got to try it out for the first time last week while working though some of the hands-on labs at TechEd 2009 in Los Angeles. I was so engrossed in the lab content that I didn't pay it a lot of attention. BTW, Scott Hanselmann gave a great session entitled "Whirlwind Tour around .NET 4 (and Visual Studio) Beta 1 - check it out.

I decided to try it out this evening on a Windows Server 2008 VM, which had SQL Server 2005 installed. Everything went smoothly until after the first reboot when it bombed out. Then I remembered that there is a new Windows 4.5 Installer out so I downloaded that and tried again. Success! It only took about thirty minutes on a fairly fast machine.

I'm using VMWare Workstation, but if you are using Microsoft VMs then there is a really helpful video on Channel 9 which describes the download and installation of VS 2010 in depth. Either way, be sure to grab the installer first.

  * Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 1Downloads

  * Visual Studio 2010 Product Information

What's in the works for the SharePoint Development IDE

Many months ago, the MVPs were invited to Redmond and shown the next generation of SharePoint development tools. Needless to say they were bound to a secrecy agreement and ever since have remained as tight-lipped as a duck's arse and that's watertight. So I was really dying to check out what SharePoint project templates might appear - unfortunately all I got was a blank box. However, it looks like the red-suspendered marketing folks have revealed some information on this in a VS 2010 marketing "overview" brochure (link at end of post). SharePoint goodies include:

"Project templates for list definitions, list instances, site definitions, workflows, event receivers, Business Data Catalog models, and content types"

So, it looks like the extensions are finally baked in where they belong. This is good news considering the the latest CTP of VSeWSS 1.3 has some problems with the 64-bit architecture.

"The feature and package designers in Visual Studio 2010 allow you to determine how your SharePoint application packages are assembled and deployed... without having to manually write the XML for the .wsp deployment packages."

Some further research revealed that much of this info was already out there if you knew where to look. So why were the SharePoint presenters at TechEd acting like they held the secrets of the universe? There was an announcement on some aspects of this last February on Somesegar's Blog - here you will find a link to a video interview with Reza Chitsaz, Senior Program Manager working on Office and Sharepoint tooling - this came out last November!

All hype aside, the new WPF-based IDE is really slick and I'm really looking forward to trying out some of the new Ajax 4.0 client controls :-)

The new SharePoint 2007 Marketing Website

VisualStudio2010_ProductOverview.pdf (1.03 mb)

Download the 1.3 extensions to your C:/ drive from here:

https://connect.microsoft.com/Downloads/Downloads.aspx?SiteID=428

Start the msi from an elevated command prompt - that is, right click Command Prompt icon in Start menu and select 'Run as Administrator'. Issue this command:

C:\msiexec /i VSeWSSv13_x86_Build_307_CTP.msi

This will prevent the UAC from causing the VSeWSS 1.3 to "fail prematurely".

Update 02-19-20009:

sn.exe meant for 32-bit OS runs without error on 64-bit OS and incorrectly shows message indicating success.

Update 03-31-2009:

Latest release is a .exe file, so this shouldn't cause problems.

I've covered the setting up of a SharePoint development machine in the past but I thought I might just add a few notes on setting it up on the new Windows Server 2008.

The main difference you'll notice is in the configuration of IIS7. You will need to enable the correct set of features before installing anthing else. You will install the tools in a specific order. The VM I built is a Workgroup machine for development and learning at home, so I can get away with using my MACHINENAME\Administrator account for everything. I am using VMWare Workstation version 6. I use NAT to access the Internet via my host machine.

When installing SQL Server 2005, you can ignore VS 2005-related compatibility errors. However, there is one serious gotcha: you must install the KB 950636 hotfix before installing SQL Server 2005 (only applies to Web Server Edition). If you do not do this, the install will not work on Windows Server 2008. For more details, check Bill Staples' IIS blog.

I created a base VM with just the OS and latest patches. I configured IIS7 and relaxed the browser security settings. I set a maximum size for the VM to grow to dynamically and configured it in 2GB chunks. Then I defragged and ran the VMWare shrink.

At this point, I created a full clone on which I installed the following, in this order:

* KB 950636
* SQL Server 2005
* SQL Server 2005 SP2
* Windows Updates
* VS 2008
* Windows Updates
* Office 2007 Enterprise
* Windows Updates

Finally, install SharePoint Server 2007 with SP1 and you should be good to go :-)