February, 2010

If you find out that after trying out one of the beta versions of the new Visual Studio 2010 and uninstalling it together with the .NET Framework 4 or uninstalling only .NET Framework 4, every time you try to load a project on Visual Studio 2008 you face...

The upcoming .NET Framework 4 and Visual Studio 2010 (now in RC) has a lot of exciting new features. From BigInt and parallel libraries, to code contracts, CLR side by side, a new project system for C++ and multi-targeting. Just to name a few. There is...

I have had several customers asking me about MSBuild and how to get started learning the language and using it. A little over a year and a half ago, I joined the MSBuild team. When I got here, I did not even know what MSBuild was, and I have been a Visual...

We had in the last days a couple of reports of Visual Studio’s background flickering on old LCD monitors because of the texture and the colors used by default by the shell. So far we have not been able to reproduce in-house the problem (and I suspect...

One of the most powerful tools for troubleshooting issues that involve Visual Studio extensions is often overlooked, even though it has been around for quite some time (since VS 2005 ). Anyone wondering what Visual Studio is doing with their VS Package...

One of the cool new features of MSBuild 4.0 is the extensible task factory.  Task factories allow you to include scripts directly in your project file (or an imported .targets file) and have those scripts parsed and executed by your favorite interpreter...

VSIX is the new technology used for deploying extensions in Visual Studio 2010. The primary goal of this new technology is to encourage extension creation and consumption by easing the management (“management” meaning Browsing/Installing/Uninstalling...

Introduction With the release of .NET Framework 4 and Visual Studio 2010 comes MSBuild 4.0. Among the many great features in this version are new mechanisms to allow you (or your build lab) to extend the default build targets files with your own customizations...

In this post I’ll try to answer the most common questions I find on forums and in documentation feedback about C# covariance and contravariance. It’s a big topic for a single blog post, so expect to see a lot of “more information” links. Special thanks...

This is the first part in a seven part series. Links to the other parts are included at the bottom of this post. Now that the Release Candidate for Visual Studio 2010 is publicly available, we’ve started receiving questions from inquisitive users...

UPDATE: This issue is fixed in .NET 4.5. As always, feedback is welcome! Please leave your comments in this blog post and report any bugs on Microsoft Connect . If you have the RC build of VS2010, you are targeting the 3.5, 3.0, or 2.0 Framework...

Have you ever wanted to quickly share a code sample to Twitter or your blog without leaving Visual Studio? Steve Apiki walks through how to create an extension for Visual Studio 2010 that does just that. Walkthrough: http://www.devx.com/VS_2010/Article...

Ken Levy and I sat down last week to chat about the new VS 2010 IDE and some of the great features we’ve added for this release. From the CodeCast site : “In this episode of CodeCast, Ken Levy interviews Weston Hutchins, program manager on the Visual...

Visual Studio 2010 Beta2 custom Start Pages will fail to load in Visual Studio 2010 RC due to WPF namespaces changes caused by Shell assembly refactoring between the Beta2 and RC releases. Specifically Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.UI.dll has been split...

UPDATE: There is now a patch available for this issue in the VS 2010 RC. If you're experiencing frequent crashing when IntelliSense pops up or is dismissed, please download this patch to see whether it resolves the issue. This bug has also been fixed...

If you haven’t read the news on other notable MSDN blogs , I’m pleased to announce that the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Release Candidates are now available for download ! Currently the downloads are only available to MSDN subscribers, but...

With the upcoming Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate around the corner, I would like to talk briefly about some changes we have made to the first-launch-after-installation sequence. Many of you may notice that the first time you start VS after installing...

UPDATE 2/8 : I forgot to mention a change to the VSIX file format in the Release Candidate that might impact your extensions. The valid <Edition> values (under <SupportedProducts>) have been updated to better reflect our SKU branding. The...

If you like the tips and tricks we sometimes post on this blog, you might want to check out the Visual Studio Tips and Tricks blog . It’s written by Zain Naboulsi, a Senior Developer Evangelist at Microsoft, and it’s devoted to these little productivity...