Debugging VS2010 Crashes
Microsoft is slated to offer a public release candidate (RC) of Visual Studio 2010 this month. With the RC imminent, many developers are hoping that the company has addressed the stability issues in beta 2.
Based on feedback after beta 2 was released last October, Microsoft delayed the "launch" of VS2010 by several weeks to work on performance optimization and virtual memory usage improvements. The release to manufacturing is now expected on April 12, which coincides with the official launch event.
As I reported in a news article on the upcoming RC: With beta 2, developers reported problems with hanging when XAML files are being worked on, crashing if debugging is done with the XAML editor open and other Silverlight and ASP.NET 4 issues. Similarly, sluggishness around Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and bugs in the automation models of the WPF command bars for VS add-ins have caused headaches for some people.
In response to that article, several people shared similar experiences and voiced their concerns about how much progress Microsoft has made. The article raised the question of whether the Dev10 improvements are worth it, if the result is slower IDE performance.
At this point, Ken Smith of Woodinville, WA is a lot more worried about stability:
"I'm actually more concerned about stability than performance. If I get through a day with VS2010 Beta 2 with less than 5 crashes, I'm doing well. I keep hearing good things about the new builds, but I'll reserve judgment until I get my hands on the RC."
Jamie Clayton of Brisbane, Australia writes:
"Beta 2 didn't allow me to do much with any of my existing projects. I couldn't get existing WPF application to run without the IDE crashing completely. The SQL reporting viewer isn't even a WPF one! The VS2010 RC what scares me is that I've got to wait for a RC and rush test/report and pray that MS offers to fix the problems, or we have to wait for SP1."
Another reader echoed Ken Smith's concerns, hoping for "stability, stability, stability":
"Since I am using Silverlight 4.0 beta, I must use VS10. As I read the blogs, I read "Great work!" relative to VS10. This brings on the question, "Is anyone (even Microsoft) using this with a real application with hundreds of source files?" The new XAML designer crashes on 2/3rds of my XAML files and is quite unresponsive. What happened to C++ with pointers. This "managed code" environment is so sssssllllllooooowwwww that for all the speed increases in hardware, we give it all away (and much more!) with managed code. And then we call this an "advancement" in technology…
"One would think that if we have a 100 percent speed improvement in hardware over the last 5 years, we could possibly add 10 percent of that improvement to the speed of software rather than subtract from it. The dichotomy that exists between MSFT and GOOG is one where MSFT is aimed totally at the corporate environment with managed code, MVVM (or whatever flavor), etc. whereas GOOG is aimed at speed, speed, and speed for the consumer. Let's hope that processor speed is increased 4-fold so that MSFT wins! Let's not continue to go backward."
Microsoft is getting ready for the RC, and announced today that it is "unpublishing" the VS2010 beta 2 extensions hosted on Visual Studio Gallery.
Weston Hutchins, a Microsoft program manager on the Visual Studio Shell Team explains in the Visual Studio blog:
"We do this because we want to ensure that all extensions are tested and work on the latest release (RC) so that users aren’t treated to numerous errors either when installing or using the extension. This same process was used to convert Beta 1 to Beta 2 extensions. The extension author will have the responsibility of testing and republishing the extension."
This same process will happen again when the VS2010 RTM is released in April. In addition, online extension manager access for beta 2 will be disabled two weeks after the RC is released, according to Hutchins.
Express your thoughts on what you'd like to see in the upcoming RC and the April release of VS2010. Share your VS2010 experiences below or drop me a line at krichards@1105media.com.
Posted by Kathleen Richards on 02/04/2010 at 1:37 PM