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Discussions, news and rants from the CTO of Developer Express, Julian M Bucknall

Hey, dude, like where's my Visual Studio 2008 support?

     

UPDATE: DXperience v2007 vol. 3.4 (2007.3.4) has now been released with full support for VS2008 RTM, rendering this particular post moot.

In the interests of future historians though, I'll leave it up.

Well, OK, we haven't got any emails quite like that yet, but I thought I'd throw up a quick blog post to say what we're doing now that MSDN subscribers now have the RTM build of Visual Studio 2008.

The first point to make is that we got our copy of Visual Studio 2008 RTM at exactly the same time as everyone else. We have to download and install it just like you, and then we get to load our various projects (products, test code, installs, etc, etc) and compile, run, and test it all. We need to do this and do it well, otherwise you, our customers, could get some very nasty buggy code. We can't assume that just because something worked in VS2005 or in one of the betas for VS2008 it's going to work just fine in the RTM of VS2008.

So, as of this morning, we're seeing several issues.

  • There's been some installation problems with Visual Studio 2008. For example, we've run into the same problems as this guy. One issue we've solved is that VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office) can interfere with the VS2008 install and you need to uninstall it first. A couple of people are also reporting issues with running VS2008 and VS2005 side-by-side.
  • There is some bizarre behavior in CodeRush and Refactor! Pro where Intellisense is not coming up. Got to solve that one of course. (Already solved: I was reading old internal posts.)
  • The XtraCharts team have discovered a doozy of a problem: the WebChartControl can no longer be dropped on a form from the toolbox. (They've narrowed it down to any custom control that is implemented in two assemblies, with the same namespace used in both assemblies. If you create such a control, drop it on the form, it's created with the wrong prefix (ccl) and so is created with errors.)

And those are only the issues I've got to learn about in the last 24 hours. I dare say there have been others that have been solved without me being in the loop.

So, yes, we're working hard on getting minor releases of our products that support the Visual Studio 2008 RTM out as soon as possible. Stay tuned for more developments.

It doesn't help that tomorrow is Thanksgiving... Sigh.

Published Nov 21 2007, 09:12 AM by Julian Bucknall (DevExpress)
Filed under:
Technorati tags: VS2008
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Comments

 

Benza said:

There is some bizarre behavior in CodeRush and Refactor! Pro where Intellisense is not coming up.

I don't know if it can help but the problem already occured in vs 2008 beta 2

November 21, 2007 12:37 PM
 

Linton said:

Thanks for the update. Take a few days off, you guys really deserve it!

November 21, 2007 1:16 PM
 

Matthew MacSuga said:

In Soviet Russia, there is no time off!  Get to work!!! :P  You guys are doing a terrific job by the way.. enjoy your Thanksgiving!!

p.s., be in early Friday to continue working. :P

November 21, 2007 2:24 PM
 

MESUT KOSUCU said:

you are late.. I think you should have solved all this problem about the visual studio 2008  before it released. I have seen some news on the internet that are about that many thir party component companies are ready for 2008... What is wrong with Devex?

November 22, 2007 7:59 AM
 

Mark Miller said:

Benza: The CodeRush/Intellisense issue in VS 2008 beta 2 has been solved for a while now. That fix is available in a daily build.

November 22, 2007 8:59 AM
 

Ben Hayat said:

>>What is wrong with Devex?

Are you serious? How long have you been customer of DX? FYI, this company does things right, by the book. You can rest assure that they do their best not to put us (developers) in jeopardy. So, have some respect and appreciation for their decision!

November 22, 2007 9:47 AM
 

Andrew Jackson said:

Thanks for the heads-up. We're chomping at the bit here to upgrade to .NET 3.5 but we use your controls so much we can't. Also, any possibility of WPF controls?

Thanks.

P.S. It's only a holiday in the States, think of your international clients!!! ;-)

November 22, 2007 10:46 AM
 

Rollie Claro said:

>>What is wrong with Devex?

there is nothing wrong with devEx. i think you should change your question to

whats is wrong with building your applications with a beta tool?

remember acropolis? object spaces? .NET 1.1?

November 22, 2007 11:42 AM
 

MESUT KOSUCU said:

Ben Hayat!

I respect to their decision! and I have been their customer for 2 years and definitelly agree that they are triyng to to do their best! anyway I just wanted to say why  we have  to wait to implement new features...

November 22, 2007 4:52 PM
 

Julian Bucknall (DevExpress) said:

Benza: OK, scratch the CodeRush problem. I was reading some out of date internal posts. Sigh.

Mesut: I'm glad you think we are prescient and can solve problems before we're presented with them. Unfortunately, in reality we're not, and so we had to wait until the RTM release before we were really sure that everything works as before. The majority of things do, some do not. Won't be long now and then we can all wait four years before the next Visual Studio. (That's a joke, based on the progression in the differences in years of prior versions.)

Andrew: It'll be into 2008 before we're ready with some WPF products.

Cheers, Julian

November 23, 2007 12:01 AM
 

Crono said:

For my part, I'd say that though I'm happy to see DX doing everything it can to keep up with technology, I hope they do not lose focus on priorities, those being making sure that common, basic functionnalities exists and are working correctly.

For example, I'm thinking of the XtraGrid that can now be presented as a carousel. VERY cool! ... and yet it still doesn't allow developpers to specify how each column of the classic gridview must be individualy exported to Excel (text or value) or printed (no need to print a column which only hold a delete button).

Now don't get me wrong, I really like your products. They make a big difference in my everyday work.

But still, I have a lot of trouble explaining to my users how can my app looks so cool and allows them to customize this and that... while on the other hand it isn't able to do simple things (from their perspective), like automatically convert the grid's data correctly when exporting to Excel or showing a progress bar while waiting for it to print.

November 27, 2007 2:45 PM
 

Danny McNaught said:

What does not work in VS.Net 2008 RTM?  I uninstall the Beta, Removed VSTO and removed CodeRush 2.5.8, and Refactor Pro 2.5.8 then installed VS.Net 2008 RTM along side VS.Net 2005 then reinstalled Refactor Pro 2.5.8 and CodeRush 2.5.8 it has not given me any errors and I have used both products under VS.Net 2008 RTM.  So what is not working?

November 27, 2007 5:16 PM
 

VICTOR BOGDANOV said:

Danny,

Layout control is not working properly in design mode. You can easily reproduce that.

November 28, 2007 2:55 AM
 

Andy Moyer said:

Wow...some good comments. I got a few good, and needed, laughs. I just want to say that DX is awesome so far. Microsoft should just completely give up on developing most controls and turn it over to people like the DX team. I struggled with MS controls for a long time. Finally making the jump to DX is like a dream come true. I must say though...I started using the Xtra reports recently and definitely noticed some issues. Am I the only one? P.S. I'm a new customer...

November 28, 2007 6:57 PM
 

ctodx said:

We've had to make a breaking change to XtraCharts in ASP.NET in a minor release of DXperience due

December 4, 2007 1:29 PM
 

Howard Herrera said:

I just received an e-mail with subject "DXperience 7.3.4 introduces full support for Visual Studio 2008".

December 4, 2007 4:18 PM
 

Dennis said:

I so badly want Refactor! Pro for VS2008...

December 5, 2007 5:33 AM
 

Derek Thornton said:

DevEx Programmers are Human too. Go figure.

I don't use any of your products simply because I'm not building big enough projects for them, but I keep up with them on a monthly basis and I love how they all work. I've no doubt that the fixes to make it compatible with VS2008 will all get worked out very quickly.

December 6, 2007 5:00 PM

About Julian Bucknall (DevExpress)

Julian is the Chief Technology Officer at Developer Express. You can reach him directly at julianb@devexpress.com. You can also follow him on Twitter with the ID JMBucknall.
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