While preparing my home machine for Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, I found that uninstalling the .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 1 seems to break the ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions in Visual Studio 2005. After uninstalling, every time I tried to drag a AJAX control from the Toolbox to the design surface, Visual Studio 2005 complained it coudn't find the System.Web.Extensions.dll. To fix that, delete the existing AJAX Extensions tab from the Toolbox and recreate it using Add Tab and Choose Items…

(I also did a repair installation of the ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions as well, but I don't think that was necessary.)

It's been a while since I started porting my venerable learning project XmlView.NET (an XML viewer that includes XSD schema validation) to .NET 2.0 Beta 2. The original .NET 1.1 project uses NUnit to the test the application's core (or model, if you will), so I was anxious to see how VSST's unit testing facilities stack up against NUnit and VS .NET 2003:

• First, it's very annoying that MS introduced a new API that does not follow the classic xUnit approach. Instead of TestFixture, we now have TestClass. Instead of SetUp and TearDown, we now have TestInitialize and TestCleanup. You can get around this by using alias directives, but this is just a kludge.
• The current performance is rather poor. This is already one of the top bugs in the MSDN product feedback center.
• If you've ever seen any xUnit test runner, you know what the green bar is. There's no green bar in VS 2005. It puts green checkmarks next to each test that has run successfully. I prefer having a green bar, as it is a much more obvious indicator than simple check marks.
• Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.UnitTesting.Framework.Assert offers generics support, e.g. Assert.AreEqual<T>—neat.
• The ClassInitialize (think TestFixtureSetUp), ClassCleanup (think TestFixtureTearDown), AssemblyInitialize (that's new), and AssemblyCleanup (new as well) attributes don't work as advertised and are not properly documented—typical beta woes.

My first week of playing around with Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 can be easily summarized as "downloading and installing".

Unless you are in the movie or music file sharing business, downloading the 3.75 GB Team Edition really puts both your patience and your Internet access to test. What seemed a bit strange to me is that there's currently no Professional Edition available for download. That's why I chose Team Edition, even though I won't likely look into the "Team" specific features.¹ Sticking with my DSL flat rate proves unparalleled wisdom

Installing this beast was another story. I didn't use a clean Windows image to install Beta 2. Instead, I cloned my regular workstation's hard disk (an up-to-date Windows XP SP2 installation running VS2003 .NET, Office XP, various Java develepment tools, and some games) and used the clone to perform the installation.

Basically, I ran into two problems:

• Installing SQL Server 2005 Express Edition failed over and over again. After digging through the README file, I found one important hint: "When installing Visual Studio on a machine with SQL Server already installed, uncheck SQL Server Express April CTP."
  
  Ok, my original setup included MSDE 2000A, so uninstalled that and started over again. Still, no joy.
  
  Next, I tried to run SQL Server 2005 Express Edition's setup program manually. But that didn't work either, complaining that some installation package seemed to be corrupt. Was my download screwed up? I quickly downloaded the SQL Server 2005 Express Edition standalone package and tried to install that. Lo and behold, it failed with more or less the same error message as the VS 2005 setup program before.
  
  Thus, I started searching through the Product Feedback Center, and luckily found some interesting hints. It all boiled down to this: Make sure to run the installation including advanced options—that's a checkbox at the start of installation wizard of SQL Server 2005 Express Edition's setup porgram. This will allow you to select the service account that run your SQL Server instances. Instead of "network service", choose "local service". This may not be the best option for real life deployment, but it at least allows you to install the bloody thing…
  
  Another note: The installation program suggests installing a named instance SQLEXPRESS. The database scripts of the .NET 2.0 Framework Beta 2 samples use that instance as well, so make sure to use this name or change the SQL scripts accordingly.
  
• Visual Studio's failed to load its Unit Test facilities. Silly me, because on page 17 of the known issues document it says: "Team Developer and Test tools do not function if Team Foundation Client is not also installed." Of course I tried to be smart when installing VS 2005 and chose not to install Team Foundation Client, since I didn't have Team Foundation Server deployed anyway. OK, reinstalling the full blown product fixed that easily. Mental note: This is the era of 100+ GB hard disks. No reason to be stingy with disk space.

 

So here we are!

¹ Actually, I'm highly interested in Team Edition's unit testing features. I do think though that these should be included in all editions of Visual Studio 2005. And I'm not alone here…