Paul Wilson's .NET Blog

I agree on every level. As someone who uses VS.NET 2002 and 2003 *still* I find it difficult to believe this decision has been made because of technical reasons and more to do with marketing reasons - pushing people into a new VS.NET.

for some purposes its neccessary to use win 2003 server as development OS, so for me its not a problem

If Visual Studio 2003 is not supported, then why do the release notes for Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2003 (not 2005) say Windows Vista is a supported platform? Shouldn't it be just a matter of installing Visual Studio 2003 SP1?

'We Developers' number an abject minority compared to the target audience for vista - like all software or hardware upgrades people choose to move to it when they feel it offers them benefit, for home users this may be sooner than developers. I don't see where you have a point.

The big technical challenge is with enabling scenarios like advanced debugging. Debuggers are incredibly invasive in a process, and so changes in how an OS handles memory layout can have big impacts on it. Vista did a lot of work in this release to tighten security and lock down process/memory usage - which is what is affecting both the VS debugger, as well as every other debugger out there. Since the VS debugger is particularly rich (multi-language, managed/native interop, COM + Jscript integration, etc) - it will need additional work to fully support all scenarios on Vista. That is also the reason we are releasing a special servicing release after VS 2005 SP1 specific to Vista - to make sure everything (and especially debugging and profiling) work in all scenarios. It is actually several man-months of work (we've had a team working on this for quite awhile). Note that the .NET 1.1 (and ASP.NET 1.1) is fully supported at runtime on Vista. VS 2003 will mostly work on Vista. What we are saying, though, is that there will be some scenarios where VS 2003 doesn't work (or work well) on Vista - hence the reason it isn't a supported scenario. Instead, we recommend using a VPC/VM image for VS 2003 development to ensure 100% compat. Hope this helps - even if the answer isn't entirely what we'd all like it to be, Scott

ברגעים אלה, קראתי את מה שנכתב במספר בלוגים [לינקים שונים] לגבי התמיכה של כלי פיתוח ב Windows Vista. בסופו...

I just don't get why you people continue to slavishly follow microsoft and subject yourselves to this kind of stuff. Vista "will not support developers" because it doesn't have to. You guys can sit around and *** about it all you want but it doesn't matter because you have no alternative.

"We Developers' number an abject minority compared to the target audience for vista - like all software or hardware upgrades people choose to move to it when they feel it offers them benefit, for home users this may be sooner than developers. I don't see where you have a point." Chad, Explain to me how we can be expected to weed out platform dependencies if we can't use the platform we are developing for? How many man hours are going to be lost to the compile-deploy-test-fail-recompile cycle? If the freakin' IDE won't run on Vista, how can we be sure that the code it's spitting out will? Not to mention the headache that game developers will have. Got a working codebase under VS 2003? Better get started migrating it to 2005.

The IDE runs fine (at least 2005 does without any SP1). I think it's a matter of UAC prompts and whatnot which are a side-effect of hardened security. I've made a couple of small C# class libraries and Web Sites using Visual Studio 2005 and had no problems at all. Not being supported does not equal "wont-install". Considering the jumping-through-hoops many 3rd party libraries and tools give you i don't think developers will be having many problems with running 2005 on Vista, with or without SP1. Also, it was sort of given that a lot of things would break or bend with all the added security and changes MS has done to Vista.

I think you guys are overreacting a bit. Microsoft's not out to intentionally screw you guys. Seriously, that's pretty irrational.

I don't know if ScottGu will come back, but I'm afraid that I have a problem with this answer. I do mobile development. Virtual PC does not virtualise USB devices, and so ActiveSync running in a guest OS cannot synchronize with my devices. I need to be able to connect ActiveSync with a device and debug a .NET Compact Framework 1.0 application using Visual Studio .NET 2003. Yes, you can work on Compact Framework 1.0 applications in VS 2005, but it isn't possible to do this with no incompatible changes - editing a form causes its .resx files to be converted to a different format, which then won't load in 2003. VS 2003 is meant to be in mainstream support up until October 2008 according to the lifecycle policy. That means we expect you to make your best efforts to keep it compatible. That's what mainstream support should mean.

>or we developers need to tell everyone to ignore Vista since its clearly not ready. I sympathies with much of what you said however I cannot agree at all with your closing statement. The vast majority of users simply don't care one bit about our development hassles with Visual Studio on Vista. Developers are an amazingly small percentage of the user base. So why should we feel we have the right to tell end users to ignore Vista because of OUR troubles? End users care about programs not developers. If they find they have a compelling need for Vista then they should use it. If we feel there is a compelling need to not support it with our software then we should do it.

Windows Vista will be released later this year to partners and volume license customers and in the beginning of 2007 to the masses. A successful release of a software product such as Windows Vista req...

Vista and Visual Studio 2003 incompatibility: the reasons

I think this is absolute madness... Surely Microsoft can't be this dumb?

>...Virtual PC does not virtualise USB devices... VMWare does, up to a point; it has trouble with high-bandwidth devices like webcams, but it might be enough for remote debugging of devices.

The announcement of the beta of SP1 for Vista on somasegar's blog here seems to have caused some consternation since they're saying they need a new service pack for Vista and VS2003 won't be supported.The truth is a bit more mixed than that as Scott Guth

This is totally inaccurate. First of all, VS2005 already runs on Vista, secondly, Somasegar said, (at http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2006/09/26/772250.aspx), " Visual Studio 2005 SP1 will run on Vista but will likely have a few compatibility issues. " Stop spreading FUD.

If VS 2005 does not run in the operating system. Its a waste for me. Since I am working on the studio Most of the time

As part ofa recent Visual Studio 2005 SP1 announcement,the Corp VP of Microsoft's Developer Divisionstated

PaulWilson: So, that's why the title says, "Vista will NOT support Developers", eh? Come on.

Richard: if it doesn't affect your work, good for you. It does affect our work and a lot of other's work. VS.NET 2005 + sp1 also has problems on vista, but perhaps not that big, although I do expect to have UAC pop up when I debug. I want an OS which supports the software that I need. If the OS is incapable of running the software I need, the OS is useless and meaningless, because the SOLE purpose of the OS is running applications and providing a layer for my software and me to work with the hardware. If it fails to do that, the OS can take a hike. You also might not realize this, but Developers are very important. If developers lag behind on accepting an OS, less software specifically written for that OS is released, delaying the OS' large acceptance.

Dan: unfortunately VMWare Workstation is not free. Also, I don't know if you've tried to actually work in a VM. My experience is that it's painful - it's hard to get data in and out of the VM. Copy and paste doesn't 'just work'. You have to share specific folders you want to use in the VM explicitly, or use network protocols to access data stored on the same machine (also have to share the folders). The rational choice for us is to stick with Windows XP and remote debug into a Vista VM, and put up with not having Glass. Scott's comment suggests, though, that even remote debugging with VS2003 may not work very well.

Frans: The point of my complaint is that there are all these bloggers posting titles like "No Visual Studio support in Vista" and "Vista will NOT support developers" etc..., they don't say, "VS2002-2003 won't run on Vista" or "Vista won't have full VS compatibility at release!" or much more accurate, and less-eye-grabbing attention. So, I have to go into work and explain to my bosses that the headlines they read are wrong, and they shouldn't panic. That's my issue.

Hey man, go easy on em, and besides its just too easy to fire up a VPC with the old bits... The notion of extreme backward compatibility in Microsoft's Operating Systems has produced all of these security nightmares... having to support flawed interfaces for 10 years just doesn't make sense in the era of virtualization and emulation.

I'm using VS2005 on Vista RC1 (5600) pretty extensively... class libraries, Windows Forms, WPF apps and have not run into any problems that I am aware of, outside of an occasional failure to repaint the IDE. Am I missing something?

Another key question is whether new machines with Vista include an implicit license to Windows XP in order to run it in a VPC? Otherwise we have to purchase a license to XP in order to apply this workaround, no? http://haacked.com/archive/2006/10/02/Does_Vista_Come_With_An_Implicit_License_To_WinXP.aspx

There does still seem to be some confusion regarding the basic facts here. Visual Studio 2005 will definitely be supported on Vista. The C# team is testing it extensively, and a service pack is already in beta. I've installed it on Vista, and tested it, and it runs quite smoothly. There are still issues to resolve, but they are relatively minor. - Charlie

You know, there has been a lot of controversy lately (from developers I respect who should know better)

Hmm. I've been using VC 2005 on Vista for a good while now and I haven't noticed any problems. Luckily, I saw this blog. If you hadn't told me it didn't work, I never would have known!

I have been working solidly all weekend on VS2005 (SP1 Beta)/Vista RC2. It runs *so* much quicker than XP I have returned to work where I have a higher spec PC and it feels 'broken' just because it is running XP! Some of the new features in Vista are compelling *especially* for developers. Try it - you'll see.

Vista MUST support VS2003.

>Dan: unfortunately VMWare Workstation is not free.

But it's worth every cent (unlike Vista, it seems).

To set the record straight - or at least firmly crooked:

VS 2005 w/ SP 1 WORKS ON VISTA - with some issues. Nothing I have seen is a showstopper though...

VS 2003 SORT OF WORKS ON VISTA - ASP.NET Development will not work in the IDE - you can't install that feature because you can't install Frontpage Server Extensions.

That's been my experience, and I'm pretty close to the source - I work at the MS Corp. Campus, and that's the consensus here...

Regards...