Visual Studio 2022 offline
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I work on an air-gapped development network. Every year or so, I go out and spend a week or so on an internet connected machine and download Visual Studio and Android Studio and all the bits and pieces required for those products and the libraries they want to download to support our projects. Copy all that onto DVDs and transfer it to the air-gap and setup some scripts to install it all. Yes, it is a colossal PITA but it's what I've got to do for my work environment. VS has been getting worse each release as Microsoft ignores their offline developers more and more. If you need all those damn NuGet packages to do the most basic development actions like unit tests, include the *&(^# things in the offline packages! ... Okay, rant over. Android Studio hasn't gotten worse, its process has been the same for years now ... run it online then bundle up the repository cache and take that offline. I'm getting ready to do the big nasty for this year, and my question deals with Visual Studio. Currently, we have 2019 (with about half the major components), on the air-gap network with all current patches applied. I'm soliciting opinions on: - how much more does 2022 want to access the internet in its normal course of operations, once you have all components for your project on the local machine? For reference, 2019 works fine with no delays trying to access the internet to do "other stuff" or look for updates or phone home. - is it worth it to upgrade to 2022? We have a suite of .NET Framework 4.7.2 WinForms applications, along with both C and C++ programs. No web and no database ... although I can see some small local DB stuff coming. This questions only applies if we stick with NET Framework. We're thinking about migrating to .NET 7 (whatever the current version is), which will force us to upgrade and render this question moot. - how easy is it to set up a local NuGet server with just those packages put out by Microsoft, and maybe a few other select sources? We are excessively paranoid about third party stuff here, so don't really use much that we can't get the source for and compile ourselves, so I'm not talking all those random open source packages that are out there. Yes, I know MS isn't qualitatively better, but my overlords are much happier if I can point to them, or some other recognized corporate purveyor of SW tools, as the source of a binary. Data is transferred the old fashioned sneaker-net way, using DVDs. Having 10s of them is not a problem, but having 100s is. Al
I tried with all VS, complete offline system in home for learning purpose, after VS2015 all fail here and there, if requirement is just .Net framework 4.7, you can stick what is working for you.
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I work on an air-gapped development network. Every year or so, I go out and spend a week or so on an internet connected machine and download Visual Studio and Android Studio and all the bits and pieces required for those products and the libraries they want to download to support our projects. Copy all that onto DVDs and transfer it to the air-gap and setup some scripts to install it all. Yes, it is a colossal PITA but it's what I've got to do for my work environment. VS has been getting worse each release as Microsoft ignores their offline developers more and more. If you need all those damn NuGet packages to do the most basic development actions like unit tests, include the *&(^# things in the offline packages! ... Okay, rant over. Android Studio hasn't gotten worse, its process has been the same for years now ... run it online then bundle up the repository cache and take that offline. I'm getting ready to do the big nasty for this year, and my question deals with Visual Studio. Currently, we have 2019 (with about half the major components), on the air-gap network with all current patches applied. I'm soliciting opinions on: - how much more does 2022 want to access the internet in its normal course of operations, once you have all components for your project on the local machine? For reference, 2019 works fine with no delays trying to access the internet to do "other stuff" or look for updates or phone home. - is it worth it to upgrade to 2022? We have a suite of .NET Framework 4.7.2 WinForms applications, along with both C and C++ programs. No web and no database ... although I can see some small local DB stuff coming. This questions only applies if we stick with NET Framework. We're thinking about migrating to .NET 7 (whatever the current version is), which will force us to upgrade and render this question moot. - how easy is it to set up a local NuGet server with just those packages put out by Microsoft, and maybe a few other select sources? We are excessively paranoid about third party stuff here, so don't really use much that we can't get the source for and compile ourselves, so I'm not talking all those random open source packages that are out there. Yes, I know MS isn't qualitatively better, but my overlords are much happier if I can point to them, or some other recognized corporate purveyor of SW tools, as the source of a binary. Data is transferred the old fashioned sneaker-net way, using DVDs. Having 10s of them is not a problem, but having 100s is. Al
Thanks to all for your experiences and opinions. The results are: 1) VS 2022 off-line -- I'll have to experiment with VS 2022 to see how it behaves off-line for myself. The comments here have been a mixed bag, seemingly depending on which mode the individual is used to; very online folks find offline a pain whereas those not using online packages / usually offline find it better than 2019. 2) .NET vs .NET Framework -- very much based on project domain. We prefer to use stay close to current versions but ... I'll just have to see. 3) NuGet off-line -- this is pretty easy, either using GitSomething as the local server or just stashing the downloaded packages in a directory and point to that. Making sure I get all the packages I want the first time is going to be the key here. Thanks again!
Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors - and miss. Lazarus Long, "Time Enough For Love" by Robert A. Heinlein
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Thanks for your experience with 2022 working offline. If we decide to migrate to the new NET, we're going to have to upgrade to 2022. Unless someone knows a way to make 2019 support .NET 7. If 2022 is that unreasonable about working offline, that becomes a con in the debate about migrating. I'll be doing some experimenting with that when I'm out in internet land. As for the rest -- given your underlying assumptions (which you can deduce, based on your post), your comments are correct in every manner, and I agree with them. But ... you knew there was a but coming :) ... in my case, those assumptions are not correct and the development environment is absolutely correct for what I work on.
Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors - and miss. Lazarus Long, "Time Enough For Love" by Robert A. Heinlein
VS 2022 does a check for package updates normally. It is very easy to set up local nuget_repo on either an internal server or local directory on dev PC. Nexus operates as a proxy service for nuget but probably a lot faster and easier to build your own proxy service copy from "public" sources to local machine.
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I think where you are going in the wrong direction is to think that an "air-gapped dev system" is something bad, there "there is something wrong with that picture". There are plenty of applications that work completely without the need for the Internet, for very valid reasons. I did for example a few years back a data conversion job for a large nationwide client in the healthcare business. I actually had to work the other way around, I wrote and updated the conversion software on my own laptop, with no connection to the hospital's infrastructure (bar electricity). Initial test data was screened and anonymized before I got this on my computer. There was never one bit of live data on my system. And program changes were also transferred to the actual computer performing the conversion via read-only media. This way no patient data could possibly get out this way. Yes, a bit cumbersome, but workable. And not that I really needed to Internet for any development, as the IDE/compiler/libraries work very nicely self-contained (it wasn't a Microsoft product). I think it is an absolute fallacy these days that so many people think that everything is "in the cloud", "needs to be connected to the Internet". Beside that in some businesses, the air-gap exists is so that no data gets out of the environment. Hence for example the read-only media (DVD) that the OP mentioned. And no, you ABSOLUTELY do not, NEVER, develop with any live data. NEVER EVER!
Ralf Quint wrote:
I think where you are going in the wrong direction is to think that an "air-gapped dev system" is something bad, there "there is something wrong with that picture".
It's not that I think it's "wrong", it's that based on my experience with MS's development tools, they make your life kinda miserable if you are offline.
Ralf Quint wrote:
I think it is an absolute fallacy these days that so many people think that everything is "in the cloud", "needs to be connected to the Internet".
I hope I didn't give the wrong impression--I'm entirely with you. I have a slow internet connection here at home, and I'm the guy who still, to this day, will always raise his hand and ask "how well will this work for those who are offline"...I despise products that assume you'll always be connected. I despise products that assume they'll be running on the fastest CPU with tons of memory and disk/network latency isn't a consideration, and they'll be the only products running on a system.
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Ralf Quint wrote:
I think where you are going in the wrong direction is to think that an "air-gapped dev system" is something bad, there "there is something wrong with that picture".
It's not that I think it's "wrong", it's that based on my experience with MS's development tools, they make your life kinda miserable if you are offline.
Ralf Quint wrote:
I think it is an absolute fallacy these days that so many people think that everything is "in the cloud", "needs to be connected to the Internet".
I hope I didn't give the wrong impression--I'm entirely with you. I have a slow internet connection here at home, and I'm the guy who still, to this day, will always raise his hand and ask "how well will this work for those who are offline"...I despise products that assume you'll always be connected. I despise products that assume they'll be running on the fastest CPU with tons of memory and disk/network latency isn't a consideration, and they'll be the only products running on a system.
Well, this is one (of several) reasons why I do not use any MS development tools. Microsoft has completely lost touch with reality, and unfortunately, a lot of people just keep following anyway, like the lemmings...
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Well, this is one (of several) reasons why I do not use any MS development tools. Microsoft has completely lost touch with reality, and unfortunately, a lot of people just keep following anyway, like the lemmings...
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Name one equivalent to VS - despite all its flaws. I don't think anyone's being a lemming.
Define "equivalent to VS". And all the people that think that everything has to be on .NET and/or use VS, yes, they are lemmings. Or at least blind horses with blinders on. I do all my development for years now (kind of always have) in Object Pascal and the Lazarus IDE (Delphi before that), which runs identically on Windows, Linux, macOS and then some. Much less cruft than it comes with VS (or Eclipse, ), much more straight forward and much faster...
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Define "equivalent to VS". And all the people that think that everything has to be on .NET and/or use VS, yes, they are lemmings. Or at least blind horses with blinders on. I do all my development for years now (kind of always have) in Object Pascal and the Lazarus IDE (Delphi before that), which runs identically on Windows, Linux, macOS and then some. Much less cruft than it comes with VS (or Eclipse, ), much more straight forward and much faster...
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Yeah, you're new around here and don't know much about the types of developers that hang around here...
New around here? Nope, not really.
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New around here? Nope, not really.
Barely over a year, yes, you're new. The old timers around here tend to agree - this has been discussed many, many times over. As much as most hate VS, there's really no good replacement for it. And I think you'll find that most developers here focus on Windows and .NET - specifically, C#. And they don't make the mistake of comparing apples with oranges. Calling that bunch "lemmings" will make you rather unpopular, rather quickly around these parts.
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Barely over a year, yes, you're new. The old timers around here tend to agree - this has been discussed many, many times over. As much as most hate VS, there's really no good replacement for it. And I think you'll find that most developers here focus on Windows and .NET - specifically, C#. And they don't make the mistake of comparing apples with oranges. Calling that bunch "lemmings" will make you rather unpopular, rather quickly around these parts.
dandy72 wrote:
Barely over a year, yes, you're new.
Well, not sure where you got that info from, but you are certainly wrong. It's more likely around 7 or 8 years. But anyway, if having a different opinion (and practical experience) isn't appreciated by some, oh well, so be it...
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dandy72 wrote:
Barely over a year, yes, you're new.
Well, not sure where you got that info from, but you are certainly wrong. It's more likely around 7 or 8 years. But anyway, if having a different opinion (and practical experience) isn't appreciated by some, oh well, so be it...
Ralf Quint wrote:
Well, not sure where you got that info from, but you are certainly wrong. It's more likely around 7 or 8 years.
Have you changed profiles? Because [yours](https://www.codeproject.com/script/Membership/View.aspx?mid=15683581) says you've only been on since June 22 of last year.
Ralf Quint wrote:
if having a different opinion (and practical experience) isn't appreciated by some, oh well, so be it..
It's not "having different opinion" that gets me, it's someone showing up on a very-much Windows/C#/.NET developer-centric web site, and calling VS users lemmings.
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Ralf Quint wrote:
Well, not sure where you got that info from, but you are certainly wrong. It's more likely around 7 or 8 years.
Have you changed profiles? Because [yours](https://www.codeproject.com/script/Membership/View.aspx?mid=15683581) says you've only been on since June 22 of last year.
Ralf Quint wrote:
if having a different opinion (and practical experience) isn't appreciated by some, oh well, so be it..
It's not "having different opinion" that gets me, it's someone showing up on a very-much Windows/C#/.NET developer-centric web site, and calling VS users lemmings.
dandy72 wrote:
Have you changed profiles? Because yours says you've only been on since June 22 of last year.
The oldest email from the CodeProject's "Daily News" here in my email folder is actually from 08/20/2009. I think I changed the email address once, but even that is several years ago, that's probably the 7 or 8 years that I mentioned before...
dandy72 wrote:
It's not "having different opinion" that gets me, it's someone showing up on a very-much Windows/C#/.NET developer-centric web site, and calling VS users lemmings.
Please go back and see what the OP of this thread is about, programming offline. And that is something that VS is simply unsuited for. If someone insists on using it anyway, because that's the only tool (s)he knows, then I would consider the comparison to lemmings fitting...
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dandy72 wrote:
Have you changed profiles? Because yours says you've only been on since June 22 of last year.
The oldest email from the CodeProject's "Daily News" here in my email folder is actually from 08/20/2009. I think I changed the email address once, but even that is several years ago, that's probably the 7 or 8 years that I mentioned before...
dandy72 wrote:
It's not "having different opinion" that gets me, it's someone showing up on a very-much Windows/C#/.NET developer-centric web site, and calling VS users lemmings.
Please go back and see what the OP of this thread is about, programming offline. And that is something that VS is simply unsuited for. If someone insists on using it anyway, because that's the only tool (s)he knows, then I would consider the comparison to lemmings fitting...
My previous response included a link to the details of your profile (the "yours" in "because yours says[...]"
Ralf Quint wrote:
If someone insists on using it anyway, because that's the only tool (s)he knows, then I would consider the comparison to lemmings fitting...
Now you're just being a child. VS has--literally--millions of users, and it's often the *only* tool that will work - for example - with the latest .NET release. You think people will forego its use just because it doesn't work offline as well as it could?