I've seen blocking bugs too. The last one happens when I change the port number for web projects: Visual Studio holds up all the CPU and never returns. Killing Visual Studio (the devenv process at least) is soon to become a new sport.
Oops, I had forgotten that in this case, it's not even possible to kill the devenv process using the task manager!
The only solution is to reboot. I haven't seen this for a while for a product...
This, and other issues that have come out in the last few days, is why I wanted another public beta for VS2005. We couldn't make them listen though. At least there's going to be a service pack for the IDE this time.
Yes, i second the buggy-ness. We develop with the RTM all day, both win and web, VS just plain exits without any warning multiple times a day. I've seen this happen a lot of times when the design time on some winforms throws an error for example. And when your corrected the error VS.Net ignores the changes and tries to design the old version of the form...and than exits again offcourse *grr*.
Strange.
We started coding in Beta 1 about June and we're using RTM now. And we didn't have any single problem with the IDE. And it is not a small project - the solution has about 30 projects, tens of thousands lines of code etc.
But no WinForms and Web projects (only two small webservice projects) and no dependencies on third-party controls. Maybe this is the reason everything works so fine...
I'd be glad if you'll have written more about these issues and ways to overcome them if you happen to find any. We are moving to front-end programming soon and it will be a diseaster if there are so many problems with the IDE.
Regards,
Michal
I already found 2 major bugs (one IDE hang and one compiler error, where it doesn't compile code which is correct code), and that's in 2 days of working with vs.net 2005 RTM.
The main trouble is: it's likely MS will not release any service pack or at least will wait till half 2006.
So a lot of phonecalls to PSS I think :(
This sounds bad!
I downloaded the RTM and haven't installed it....
Since you are an MVP and MS is more accessible to you than to us regular folk, I'd like to hear what they have to say about that.
We were planning to move a project to .NET 2.0, but I'm not so sure it is such a good idea to do this..... maybe we should wait for a service pack...
What do you think?
:)
I'm having second thoughts about moving from beta2 to the RTM...
Ariel, RTM is still way better than Beta 2.
"I had forgotten that in this case, it's not even possible to kill the devenv process using the task manager! "
even the kill.exe command cannot get hold of it?
Roy: You lucky, you don't play with web projects conversion.
My biggest gripe is the virtually useless master pages facility - still broken at RTM stage, and therfore is not going to be fixed.
1. You cannot get access to the visual designer and therefore the smart tags if your master page is nested.
2. Since you have to use the Code View on a master page/child page, you do not have access to the Events in the Properties Window, therefore you have to hand code the event stubs rather than simply double-click them.
These two gripes mean that even the simplest asp.net applications become a code/documentation lookup intensive nightmare. (can you imagine even atempting to configure a basic GridView without the smart tags?)
To think I held off until asp.net 2 came about before jumping over to the Microsoft way of thinking, only to be let down by the IDE, and going by the feelings in the community - no service packs just wait for the next version.
Performance is not very good overall. Plus, intellisense is so slow in VS2005. I'm really bumbed out about it. However, I'm confident that they can get it fixed. The IDE team is a great group of guys and they care about their product and take a lot of pride in it.
My gripe is with ASP.NET, I thought a new plus was the ViewState size was supposed to be smaller, guess what? It's DOUBLED in size. Even with ViewState disabled, that stupid ControlState is a cow.
Oh, man!! What a bummer :(
And people wonder why I do not want to leave VS.Net 2003. It is comments like these.
Hmm, converted a large project using LLBLGen & Infragistics controls, have had no issues. We are using remoting for all our objects.
The only issue I had was when I installed VS then installed SQL Server, SQL server acted like the Beta was installed. So I had to back things out and start over. (Luckily I use virtual machines so I just went to an earlier image).
Everything seems to be fine no crashes. Of course MSBUILD does not support C++ projects yet.
My earlier comment about the broken master pages is, I feel, just the tip of the iceberg. These features are fundamentally required for ASP.NET 2 development, and I had assumed they would be fixed by the RTM stage, since they've been present since Beta 1 - guess not.
I checked for bug reports on the two issues and they are both 'known' and 'scheduled' for the next release (eh?!) .... VS 2007(!?) Guess I'll have to go back to ColdFusion, since I'd be hand coding with ASP.NET anyway.
It seems that the Hotels were already booked by Microsoft for the launch. "To hell with a stable, fast, useful IDE, lets party!" Honestly, VS 2005 still feels like an early beta, what a shambles.
T: masterpages is not virtually useless. When used in the simpler form, I've had no problems.
There ARE however still ASP.Net website compilation issues. And the whole Website Project deal is just a pain in the keister. Can't wait for the VS2003-style web sites again, for us "Enterprise ASP.Net developers" instead of the Hobbyist ASP.Net developers. (Hey there's an idea... lets actually target the customers that are buying Visual Studio for $1000 instead of the people who want Visual Web Developer for free)
Eric - Yep Master Pages are okay if not nested - but what a mistake for not making the IDE able to handle nested ones (visually). I've had to resort to a masterpage/usercontrol fudge. yuk.
Like you said, it's not good enough for any serious asp.net developer. The IDE is simply not up to ithe task of implementing some of it's own advanced features.
These isues are probably because you are installing RTM over Beta2. May be for some reason Beta 2 didn't uninstall correctly and your machine has a mixture of Beta 2 and RTM versions of assemblies.
If you install RTM version on a clean box, you will have a better and pleasent experience.
Actually, this was on a brand new VPC image with nothing but VS 2005 and SQL 2000 (Win XP SP2)
I had the same issue. All of a sudden, all System.* reference were not found. I even tried to delete one and re-add the reference to System (yes, just the basic CLR support), VS still did not find it.
On another topic, I don't know if it was an inmstaller bug or what, but the SQL Express did not install with the management tools. Since I am depending on the good ol' Enterprise Manager for managing my developer databases, imagine my frustration. Even the command line tools (OSQL, SQLCMD) don't seem to cooperate much.
I installed the RTM on a brand new XP pro machine with SP2, so what the heck?
T -- VS 2005 doesn't support nested master pages (meaning a .aspx page inherits layout from a master-page, which in turn inherits and fills in content from another master-page) in WYSIWYG mode. VS 2005 does, though, fully support this scenario in source-view and with intellisense.
The reason for not supporting this feature with the VS 2005 release is that it is a fairly complicated implementation to make it work 100% for all scenarios (since even in the most trivial case there are 6 source files that the designer is managing at the same time -- 3 .aspx/.master and 3 code-behinds). Getting this done with high quality was deemed too risky for VS 2005 -- it will, though, be in the next release. It is also going to be supported with the new Expression Web Designer product that ships next year (I believe the beta is imminent).
A work-around if you want to use the WYSIWYG designer for things like smart-tasks on the GridView is to have a test master page that you add to your project that has the same contentplaceholder names as the ones in your nested-master file. You can then set the masterpagefile temporarily to that and switch to design-view and have full designer support for control tasks+property grid.
Since master-page files can be set both declaratively and programmatically, you can optionally add a statement to your Page_PreInit() event so that at runtime you re-point to the real nested master page:
This later step would allow you to have a page that works in both design-view and run-time without having to make code changes between changes.
Hope this helps,
Scott
Hi T,
Glad the tip was useful!
Note that the issue you mentioned (adding WYWSIWYG designer view support for master pages in multi-nested scenarios) is something we consider a feature request as opposed to a bug.
The issue Roy reported in the post above, though, is a bug. I know there are some folks on those teams looking at it right now trying to figure out what is causing it.
In answer to your question on servicing -- we will ship Service Packs (SPs) for VS 2005 that provide bug fix roll-ups to everyone. If you run into a blocking bug with any supported Microsoft product (like VS and .NET FX) you can also call PSS and request a hotfix patch (these are delivered directly to you or your company).
Hope this helps,
Scott
I've sent the offending project bits over to Microsoft. I got contacted pretty quickly, which is good. Hopefully, someone will look at this and see what the problem may be.
Eventualy I had to ditch the project and create another one, then adding the existing source files one by one to the project. That compiled and worked just fine, which means the problem is in the project/solution side.
God, that was a bad day.
Looks like I'm not the only one having bad days with this.
One tip with weird reference/project issues like these is to shutdown VS and run MSBuild on the .sln or project file (msbuild.exe ships in the framework directory). This does a command-line build with no IDE bits running.
If things don't compile with this, then there is a good chance the project or solution file is the culpret. The project file is an XML file that you can open and edit directly (notepad works) -- and you can sometimes spot issues that way (for example: if a reference is missing).
Hope this helps,
Scott
What about the speed issues when running an ASP.NET website? Any hotfix for this yet?
When I start a website project, it runs fast. As I started adding DataSource components, and third party DLL, etc. It slowed down so much I though I had a virus / trojen on my machine. Basically it went from < 15 seconds to run, to > 60 seconds to run. And this is when I change one line in one file of the code. This is unacceptable, and I hope MS releases a hotfix for this issue quickly.
Charles: You should consider stating what 3rd party dll it is. Remember that the moment you start introducing external factors such as that into the system, it's entirely possible that they're not interacting the way they ought. Much like bad video card drivers making the OS unstable -- people blame the OS when the problem was FooGraphics buggy driver.
Just today, we traced a problem appearing in .NET apps to the existance of Sun's Java VM. I've encountered problems with Sun's VM not playing well with the rest of GDI, so I can't say I'm surprised.
Scott: I, too, had non-project assembly references disappear on me today (not in a Web Project). It was corrected by removing and re-adding the references.
I've also had the "Web" link on the start page's Create/Load Web/Project panel disappear. The correction involves resetting the UI settings.
But that's been the limit of the problems I've encountered. Disappointments, but relatively minor ones.
To the folks saying they won't upgrade to 2.0: Keep in mind that the IDE is not the Framework. While VS still kicks butt over just about everything out there, if you don't want to use it, use something else. MSBuild will still build, and the code will still run.
I have actually been much happier with RTM personally. I have been using it extensively the for a little more than a week and I haven't had alot of the problems people are mentioning here. The web projects are a little bit slow, but it is still leaps and bounds over VS 2003. I am actually experiencing problems with VS 2003, now that I have been doing more stuff in VS 2005. Design view won't display at all.
Hi all,
I have just started to use ASP.Net 2 (RTM version) and I am not sure whether this is a bug or not. I would be grateful if someone could clarify this please.
The problem is that I have a Master page and a panel object within 1 of the table coloumn, but anything I add into this panel will simply disappears when I go to 'Source' and come back to 'Design' mode.
Any information would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance - Jay
Geee...this is embarrassing and sorry ro spam this thread. All of a sudden, it's working again. I will re-post if I can reproduce the steps.
Sorry for anyone trying.
Best regards - Jay
This is ABSOLUTELY frustrating. I have managed to get the problem AGAIN, this is unbelievable!!! This is also happening within a View object as well. I have shown this to a colleague who is more clued up than I am with Whidbey, and he cannot believe it either.
The problem is intermitten, but I will provide as much details as possible and hope someone can reproduce this.
Machine spec:
P4 HT 2.6Ghz.
1.5Gb RAM
Plenty of HD space
VS Version: 8.0.50727.42 (RTM.050727-4200)
The problem is as I mentioned above that when you add object(s) (text, button, label, etc) into a panel (now also in View) object, the object(s) disappears when the project is executed/go into Souce mode. I have even tried to exit the project (it ask you if you want to save the Master page and I clicked Yes), then go back into the project, the objects are still lost!!
I would serious advice anyone working with objects in Master page (maybe with pages used within ContentHolder as well) to double make sure their work is saved. Not that you can do anything about it!
Another small niggles I have is the slow refresh of the properties window, it sometimes does not refresh properly when you select another object, which I often make mistakes with changing the properties of the wrong object.
I do like ASP.Net 2 (VERY MUCH!!), but this release really hammer my expected delivery time for my project. I know the MS team work very hard on this and I hope this can be resolve as soon as possible.
Best regards - Jay
You guys need *code* to crash VS? I think I'm WAY ahead of
you -- I just got VS2005 Standard edition RTM from the MS
Launch event. I thought I'd do a little exploration with it
and write a couple utilities for my PDA.
So I install the full VS2005 Std. & MSDN library. I finish
the install, restart the PC, defrag the disk, then before I
go to sleep I start up Visual Studio just to make sure it
launches. Ok, it starts, the IDE displays, and it loads its
default www page on startup.
I decide I'm too tired to do any more coding / checking it
out, so *all* I do is go into the Preferences / Options,
change to the setting that tells it to load an "blank
workspace" instead of the default WWW home page on startup.
I save that change, exit VS2005. Now, the next day, I
rebooted the PC, and tried to load VS again. *BOOM* 100%
repeatedly when I try to load the program it displays its
splash screen and instantaneously that's covered up with an
crash/error handler dialog -- "Microsoft Visual Studio has
It doesn't matter if I start it from the START menu, or by
clicking on a .cs file or anything else, all it can do now
is instantly crash. I even manually edited the
"General.vssettings" XML file to change the startup behavior
in case it was that change that I made that causes the bug,
no, as far as I can tell it doesn't effect it.
So, yes, VS2005 blows up without even a SINGLE line of code
EVER having been viewed / edited / compiled by its IDE. Way
to go Microsoft, I thought I needed my new AMD-X2 dual core
PC to accellerate your applications, but with new VS2005
technology you can make them crash faster than the blink of
an eye rather than having to wait minutes or hours!
Maybe they can patent this as IntelliCrash or CrashCompletion technology?
Why postpone the inevitable, just get it done with on startup and
don't waste the developer's time by requiring user input to
cause the crash. ZeroClickCrash technology! Amazing!
Oh and that's the *successful* part of my experience. The worst bit
was that SQL Server 2005 Express and SQL Server 2005 Standard wouldn't
even install successfully onto a virgin system. Evidentally someone's
blog implicates SSE as giving installation errors when trying to install on a compressed
disk folder, so I guess that was my problem. If it's a system requirement for the
installation folder not to be compressed couldn't they just TELL you that rather
than having a cryptic and insoluble error at the very end of the install process?
SIGH. Yep, I'm glad that I wanted to use POSTGRES anyway; I only thought that
it'd be fun to try the integration of VS2005 / web app / ASP / C# / database
connectivity with SQL server but since neither one of those products actually *load*,
hey, problem solved. Back to MONO / Sharpdevelop / GCC. :)
(ASP.NET woes here too) I've experienced nothing but headaches with trying to add simple assembly projects to the web solution. The project referencing doesnt work at all like it did with vs2003. It in fact appears to be referencing assemblies rather than the actual projects themselves. Even though the reference is marked 'Auto Update' it's definately NOT automatically updating the reference when the assembly is rebuilt.
Btw, what is up with the absolutely useless and hideous property pages for the web developer IDE???
Pile the insanely redundant reference issues on top of the constant crashing of the vbc.exe process while editing the project and this monstrosity of an IDE gets a D grade at best. I definately wouldnt be using it if the framework hadnt improved to much.
Wow! I downloaded VSC# Express last week and I was all hot and bothered over the cool new stuff with the DataGrid and the "cleaned up" DataSet stuff.
I have been telling my new employer that they should really think about upgrading but now I a very weary of doing so. They (we) have a very large ASP.NET App that works just fine as it is and the only reason to upgrade is the optimized DataSets and the new developer features like the QuickView/Intilisense. But from your comments I can see that there are more reasons to wait until there is a patch/update than to upgrade any time soon.
As for my experince using the VSC# Express; my complaint is that it is very slow and sucks up a ton of memory AND AND you can only complie in Debug mode. So instead of calling it the Express edition that should call it what it is Shareware.
Being stuck in the North East US I have to wait until Dec 14 to goto the VS Launch Event but I can see now that it is going to be a stoning and Joe Stagner is going to have to use his Martial Arts Skills just to get out of the building alive:)
What really worries me is that all of the posts above mine are in 2005.
The first service pack came out in Dec 2006 and here it is Jan 2007 and the same problems still exist.
I just converted a very large project from 2002 to vb.net 2005 and the project does not work correctly now. Forms are locking all the fields from input, events are firing that did not fire before - it is as if memory is being overwritten - kind of like my old ANSI C days when you dumped a string of 11 characters into a string variable that has a level of 10.