The FTP functionality in VS2008 is still hopelessly broken

There are three things that they didn't fix.

1) It's still slow. Really slow. That's made worse by...

2) When it can't connect, it just locks up VS and you're screwed. End process. Forget whether you should check the "passive mode?" Save your work first. I thought network programming 101 was never let something waiting on a network call hose up the rest of the app.

3) And this one is interesting... close down the FTP window and it's still connected. I closed the entire solution, and while connected to my server, I noticed that I was still logged in. Not good.

Great idea to include, terrible execution. That's only frustrating because this was their second shot at it. 

8 Comments

  • This is because they are rumors that MS is discouraging the use of FTP. They will come up with a new technology replacement pretty soon.

  • You're making no sense. You don't make broken software to dictate some other use of technology.

  • Well, you can, and, actually, it's not a terribly bad idea...

    Step 1) Break your own software to demonstrate the inherent insecurity and problematic nature of FTP to developers who utilize your product. In fact, annoy them so much it forces them to use another protocol.

    Step 2) We forgot step 2.

    Step 3) Profit!

  • This is one of the reason that I use scp in my deployment! Directly from MSBuild.

  • www.dispatchasp.net

  • I can't believe Microsoft managed to mess up the ftp bit this time too.

    Luckily I found Notepad++. It's free and comes with a ftp plugin that works the way it should work: Ctrl+S uploads your file, and it takes less than a second. Microsoft developers should try it and learn something.

  • The main reason why it takes so long is because the IDE will also compile on the FTP. Since there is quite a lot of traffic going on during compile- and buildtime, it's nothing special it takes longer then just uploading the files.

    Notepad++ does no form of compilation and therefore seems faster, but the speed with which it's actually uploaded depends on your own uploadspeed and the speed with which the FTP-server accepts.

    Though, that doesn't take away that Visual Studio ain't working nicely with FTP protocols during designtime.

  • I wasn't talking about developing with the FTP site as your "file system," I'm just talking about uploading from your local copy to the server.

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