Maarten van Stam - Soft As In Software :-) : Visual Studio 2008 SP1

How to find SP1 changed features for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 SP1

maarten — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:14:00 GMT

If you are curious to find out what is updated in Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 SP1 there is an easy search 'trick' you can use within the online MSDN library documentation.

What you can do is go to the MSDN pages at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/default.aspx

and there you enter in the right top search box (the one that said Search MSDN with Live Search:
"SP1 feature change."

The reason is that in the MSDN library the Service Pack 1 documentation is marked with a change remark on the bottom of the MSDN article. So if you go down to the bottom of one of the found pages you'll find a change history table. The Service Pack 1 items are marked with the reason "SP1 feature change.".

So if you want to find information related to the bugfix I entered and was fixed in SP1 you can go and search for:
"SP1 feature change." Protected Document

If all goes well you'll find among others the pages:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.office.tools.excel.workbook.protectdocument.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.office.tools.excel.workbook.unprotectdocument.aspx

Changes to Cached Data not saved in password protected documents

So why did I write all this down? I was searching for the documentation on the bugfix for the bug that I entered on Connect (connect.microsoft.com). I was happy to see that not only the bug was fixed, but it was also documented:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc668203.aspx

By overriding the Document.ProtectDocument method and the Document.UnprotectDocument you are as of Service Pack 1 now able to unlock and lock the document to give the Cache the opportunity to save the data without having the document crash.

So if you had protected documents and you weren't able to make the Cached Data work together with these documents, quickly move over to SP1, research the documentation above and fix your project!

.NET hell vs. DLL hell

maarten — Thu, 15 May 2008 00:20:00 GMT

First discussions are starting to hit the world about the just released Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta and .NET Fx 3.5 SP1 Beta.

What happened is that instead of just fixing things in the Service Pack, Microsoft decided to add a whole lot of new features and whistle and bells into these SPs. So what happens if you develop applications and start using these new features provided to you in SP1? Up to now there was no need to check for an installed service pack as the SP bits are supposed to be backwards compatible.

In my opinion it would be a better decision if they just decided to move the version over to 3.6. New features is a new version if you just ask me. Question remains of course if a bugfix is also a new feature.

Visual Studio 2008 and .NET FX 3.5 SP1 Beta available now

maarten — Mon, 12 May 2008 19:21:00 GMT

It was originally planned for last friday, but to hold back the pressure for the support team to enjoy Whitsun and Mother's Day, it was rescheduled to today.

The Service Pack 1 beta (remember its still the beta!) for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET FX 3.5 is officially announced at Somasegar's Weblog

You can find the downloads over here:

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 Beta

and

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service pack 1 Beta

For me the Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 is an important release as just after Visual Studio 2008 going RTM I hit and filed a bug where it appeared that cached data in document customizations corrupted in scenarios working with protected documents. I worked out a script to repro this and the VSTO team worked real hard to get this out of the way. The fix is now available in this release:

328329

The data cache is corrupted when protected word customizations exist.

This is fixed issue number four and the complete list of VSTO related fixes is available in this document:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949258/

Besides fixing VS it also requires you to make some code changes to get it all to work. I will get back on that in one of my next blog items.

The VS2008 SP1 beta release notes and a pointer to the document above are available in this document:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/945140/

Happy testing!