Opinions on .NET beta 2?

Kannan Kalyanaraman

Hi Chris, I remember you mentioning some problems with beta 2 upgrade on to the site. Whats ur opinion on Beta 2. How much speed (both IDE as well as runtime) has improved. Since, I will be getting beta 2 only with my subscription it would take another month. So, If there's anything cool, worth mentioning let us know...screen shots wont be bad either. Well, to me changes to API looks okay (considering MS has already warned about changing of those things for each version till it becomes gold). My concern is more to do with Installation of S/w along with exisitng ones ie. VC6/Win2K and off course IDE.(Beta 1 was a nightmare on my machine). Cheers Kannan

Thomas Freudenberg

Yeah, even with dynamic help enabled it consumes only about 70 MB. That might be a big step compared to Beta 1, but MsDev98 uses much less memory.

I am a signature virus! Help me spread and copy me to your sig!

Thomas Freudenberg

I have the feeling, that the Beta 2 IDE starts faster than MsDev98. And the compiler rocks, too.

I am a signature virus! Help me spread and copy me to your sig!

Anders Molin

Well, if you select the VC 6 Keyboard Layout, and use a Danish Keyboard, you can't write the "}" char in the IDE :( You have to change the shortcut for "View Code", because it's the same keys I press to write "}"... Do not install the latest Platform SDK after you install VS.NET Beta 2, you have to install VS.NET again, because it cannot find it's compilers. X| Other than that, it works great :) - Anders Money talks, but all mine ever says is "Goodbye!"

Sardaukar

If you want amusement, try to install from a remote location, i.e. map the cdrom from another computer on your explorer (mine is \\cdrom\Windual --> local G: drive) and install. (I mean try to install). The setup will not prompt you to insert the 2nd disk into cdrom, simply says that it cannot find the files. Also, you cannot specifiy an alternate location. Seems you can install only locally. Or did I missed something? :confused:

Thomas Freudenberg

Just do not map the drive, but call \\cdrom\windual\...\setup.exe directly.

I am a signature virus! Help me spread and copy me to your sig!

Sardaukar

...but why? Does setup cares when it calls CreateFile if file name starts with G: or with \\WinDual\G ? I believe you and I obey :), but I'm still :confused: why...

Thomas Freudenberg

There are two ways to install .NET:

Use CDs. The CDs must be inserted locally.
Via LAN. The first three CDs must be copied together into one directory. Perhaps the MS developers thought, why should someone install .NET over LAN, if he has to go to the remote PC to change the CD? Than he could take the CDs and use them locally likewise (They may have not heard of jukeboxes ;P)

Regards, Thomas

I am a signature virus! Help me spread and copy me to your sig!

Sardaukar

1. CD may be defective and can take time to fix it (that's what happened :) ) 2. Administrative/Group install; I imagine ad administrator that has to install dotnet for 100 developers playing dj v7 from friday evening to monday morning :) ... or, even better, insert 10 cd at a time into your magical 10 cdrw machine, make 10 copies of v7 x 4 disks x 10 times --> 400 disks and insert on 100 machines x 4 disks x n restarts x N clicks (I don't want to imagine that, sound like level 30 of Doom II :) But seriously, every person from our company spend between 3 hours and 2 days for installation. (I canceled after disk 1 :( ). Let's stop here, maybe there people that enjoy endless setups. I am definitely not one of them.

Thomas Freudenberg

So why don't your administrator create a share for network setup instead?

I am a signature virus! Help me spread and copy me to your sig!

Sardaukar

What do you mean by "share for network setup"?

Serge Weinstock

I had invested quite a lot of time in writing a few C# applications. I must say that I was really upset by the huge changes in the .Net libraries. I can understand changes in the design, but people at Microsoft should have at least put somewhere in the documentation a list of these changes. I think that to let people have a early access to .Net is a really good idea, because it allows people at MS to have feedback from their customers. But it should not be only a one way process. Serge :mad:

Thomas Freudenberg

Ok, on a server in my company, we have created a share e.g. named vsnet_stp. this share has two subdirectories. To the first--named netsetup--I have copied the content from the first three CDs. The second directory WCU mirrors the fourth CD Windows Update Components. The result is following structure:

\\server\vsnet_stp
+--- netsetup
+--- Program Files
+--- Samples
.
.
+--- WCU
+--- dotNetFramework
.
.

I hope, that this clarify the structure :-O BTW, MSDN says following:

Download the three self-extracting executable (SFX) files to a temporary folder (such as C:\TEMP\VSNet), using the following links:

Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Edition (Beta 2) CD1

Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Edition (Beta 2) CD2

Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Edition (Beta 2) CD3

Visual Studio .NET (Beta 2) Windows Component Update

Execute each SFX to extract the setup files into two temporary folders. The three product CDs must be merged into the same folder, and the Windows Component Update CD must be extracted into a different folder. For example:

CD1 -> C:\TEMP\VSNet\Netsetup

CD2 -> C:\TEMP\VSNet\Netsetup

CD3 -> C:\TEMP\VSNet\Netsetup

WCU -> C:\TEMP\VSNet\WCU

Note: To conserve disk space, you can download one SFX file at a time, execute it to extract the files, then delete the SFX.

You are now ready to start the installation of Visual Studio .NET Beta 2. Run setup.exe from your temporary setup folder (in this example, c:\temp\VSNet\Netsetup\setup.exe).

When prompted for a path to the Windows Component Update CD, enter the path to your temporary VSNet\WCU folder (in this example, C:\TEMP\VSNet\WCU).

I think, whoever at your company, who has downloaded the files from Microsoft, should have read this as well ;P Regards, Thomas

I am a signature virus! Help me spread and copy me to your sig!

Sardaukar

Thank you for the complete answer. Now is clear enough also for me - I understand a little bit slower these kind of details since I'm writing my own setup any time. If that is what MSDN peoples' said, it should be so. Thank you again!