Using Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 in real world? Not that easy
This post contains some positive feedback and also some negative comments. I have the only intention here to express my own opinion.
I spent quite a lot of ‘spare’ time with VS 2005 Beta 2 and I am not overwhelm and convince that this version is good enough for release.
Of course a lot of things seems to be really cool, but if like me you are the only developer in your company (meaning little time to play with new toys) you are going for some major headaches.
The first complaint is the lack of compatibility with the previous version. No I am not talking about the framework, but the tool itself.
One really frustrating example of things MS has removed is the ‘Exclude from this project’ feature so useful in the current version.
When you are not part of a development team, and you have to write some real code, it’s not for me an option, I have to exclude some files from my project but I want to keep them at the same place, like a kind of archive. I have no time to go through all the files in VS 2005 and remove the ones I don’t need anymore.
One another thing very strange happens also is the fact that the conversion has replaced all my web.config by a new one, and I still don’t have a clue where my precious config files are gone.
I still don’t understand why when I compile my project every time I have different error messages. Also some errors I consider minors are now stopping the compilation, like a wrong path for an image.
Sure I can modify the tool settings but as a former computer teacher, I have a lot of doubts that any beginner will start easily with this one.
To conclude I think my tests prove to me that a lot of things are missing regarding the configuration, and the projects conversion is not working at all. After all I am trying to transform nothing more than a VS 2003 project, so why it is so complicated?
Unless you have a lot of time, I don’t recommend to jump quickly on the Beta 2, or only if you start a project from scratch.
The lack of resources and how-to are also problematic, because the new error messages are not so obvious and not reliable.
I keep anyway my hope for the final release and I look forward to see if Microsoft listen their customers.
UPDATE: Scott Guthrie confirmed that Exclude from a project will be back in the release version. Amazing that someone decided to remove it from the Beta! After all this created a huge breach in compatibility between the releases!
UPDATE2: Fabrice is right by saying that Microsoft should go faster but I really think the Beta 2 as it is today will not be clode to the release version so what is the point to go live now if I have to rebuild everything in few months?
As the situation stands up I would not recommend to my user group any serious migration of their projects until November.