We are so close now we can taste it. VS2010 is almost ready and to help give you all a nice checkpoint on where the product stands, we just pushed out RC to all MSDN Subscribers. It will go to the public on Feb 10. As with the previous Beta, the RC has a go-live license.

• VS2010 RC Official Site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/dd582936.aspx
• Download Now: Visual Studio 2010 / .NET 4.0 RC

Here’s a video Jason Zander did for Channel9:

And some other links to MSFT bloggers:

• Jason Zander - Announcing VS2010 / .NET Framework 4 Release Candidate (RC)
• Soma Somasegar - Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Release Candidate now available
• Scott Guthrie - VS 2010 / .NET 4 Release Candidate

As we like to say… go get it. Install it. Use it. And tell us what you think!!

Reposting Cameron Skinner’s post from this morning:

No, the RC for VS2010 has not yet hit the wire, but it will be very soon. :)

One of the great things about the Beta2 version of Visual Studio 2010 was the fact that the TFS server as well as all the client side products came with a “Go Live” license. Well the RC build will also be a “Go Live” build. That essentially means that we are encouraging you to use the products on production workloads, and if the format of artifacts created with Beta2 bits change in the RC bits, we will handle the migration of that data for you either automatically or through some other means. For the RC build, that will also mean migration from the RC product to the final, RTM product.

Bottom line, it is hard to try product out and get real feedback if you don’t put it to production use. It is hard to put the product in production use if you can’t be sure that your data will migrate to the final build. Thus the “Go Live” license. For the details around the “Go Live”, start with Beehler’s post.

So, if you have created modeling projects and diagrams in the beta2 build, we will be providing a tool that will automatically upgrade those files / artifacts to the RC build, when available. We’ll be announcing that tool very soon after the RC build announced.

Keep the feedback coming! :)

A couple of days ago, Oleg Sych made a wonderful post about how to combine our UML Modeling tools with T4 text templating and our extension APIs to generate code within Visual Studio.

He covers the basics of the UML designers, showing how you can use custom profiles to annotate elements for your code generation scripts.

The example is very good: generating a SQL database create script for a data model described as a UML Class diagram. This is exactly how we envisioned this stuff being used and I’m very excited to see it happening so early, on Beta 2 bits.

Read the whole article here:
http://www.olegsych.com/2010/01/uml-modeling-and-code-generation-in-visual-studio-2010/

Next month I will keynoting the Visual Studio Ultimate Event in Atlanta. Here’s the description from the event site:

The Ultimate Event: Visual Studio 2010 & Team Foundation Server 2010
Feb 02,2010 @ 8:30am
Microsoft Alpharetta Office

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 is a landmark release of the premier development toolset for Windows, Web and Cloud development. Join us for a comprehensive overview of Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010.  Microsoft has made significant investments to and improvements of Modeling and Testing/QA tools in Visual Studio. Team Foundation Server is the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) core of Team System and we’ll present enhancements in version control, reporting, project management and build management.  Spend a day with us to learn how to take software development to next level with Visual Studio 2010.

More information and registration can be found at the link above.

I will also be making a few stops for some local stuff:

Atlanta Visual Studio User Group
Feb 01, 2010 @ 6:30pm
Microsoft Alpharetta Offices

Nerd Dinner: Architecture Blather with Peter Provost
Feb 02, 2010 @ 6:30pm
5 Seasons Brewery at the Prado

If you are in the Atlanta area, I hope to see you there!

The Architecture Journal has just announce their call for papers for the 23rd issue, which just happens to be focusing on Architecture Modeling and its role in the broader SDLC.

If you’ve got something interesting you want to share, I encourage you to submit a paper idea and we’ll take a look. I’m helping review the submissions, so make it good! :)

More Info: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/bb219087.aspx

This week I was in Berlin presenting four sessions at TechEd Europe. This is a beautiful city and it was a great event.

We were very fortunate to be here for the 20th anniversary celebration of the falling of the Berlin Wall and I thought I’d share some pics. Don Smith got a bunch more using his much better camera and we also got some video of it actually coming down, but these are all I have here with me tonight.

As you may be able to tell it was pouring down rain for the 2+ hours we waited for it all to happen, but the people were fun, there was music and speeches (in German) and best of all... Glühwein!

This is the first in a series of blog posts to show how the new UML Modeling capabilities in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate can be extended. Later articles will expand on the examples shown here and show more advanced extensibility.

Introduction

In Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate we have introduced a set of new UML 2.1.2 modeling capabilities. We include designers for producing five UML diagram types:

• Class Diagram
• Sequence Diagram
• Component Diagram
• Use Case Diagram
• Activity Diagram

In addition, we also have tools for analyzing, documenting and validating your architecture. The Layer Diagram can be used to define the large layered components on your solution, map them to real code elements and later validate that your as-built system conforms to what you planned. If you have existing systems you want to investigate and understand better, we have the Architecture Explorer and a set of Dependency Graphs that you can create to see how the parts come together.

As we were building our new capabilities, we realized that people would need to be able to add new capabilities to the diagrams and models we’re including in the box. You may, for example, want to add a command for refactoring the model to the menu that appears when you right click on on a shape on the Class Diagram. Or perhaps you want to be able to drag-and-drop something onto a diagram and have it create new model elements based on the source of the drag. Or maybe your enterprise has guidelines about what makes a model “valid” and want to code those validation constraints into the tool so you know when you have deviated.

We can support all of those scenarios using very simple extensibility mechanisms that are present in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate.

Before You Begin

This series of articles assumes you already have Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Ultimate installed on your system. To make our lives a lot easier we will also be using the Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 SDK to get our projects started, installed and debugged.

In case you are missing any of those, you can find links to all of the downloads on the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework Beta 2 Landing Page.

Creating Your First Extension Project

Visual Studio 2010 uses the Managed Extensibility Framework for lightweight extensibility and we were eager adopters of that when we created our own extensibility hooks. What this means is that to create a new UML Designer extension, you create a new VSIX Project (a VSIX is just a ZIP file that tells Visual Studio how to install the extension…see What is a VSIX? for more information) and then add a simple little MEF component to it. Easy pie. So let’s get started…

Creating the VSIX Project

Before we can get into the extension itself, we need to get our project set-up correctly.

1. Create a new C# VSIX Project (you can do VB if you want but my code here is in C#). File | New | Project | Visual C# | Extensibility | VSIX Project.
2. Add references to the following .NET Assemblies:
   • Microsoft.VisualStudio.Modeling.Sdk.10.0
   • Microsoft.VisualStudio.Uml.Extensions
   • Microsoft.VisualStudio.Uml.Interfaces
   • System.ComponentModel.Composition
3. Open source.extension.vsixmanifest in the editor. (If it opens in an XML editor, close it and choose View Designer from the file context menu).
4. Fill in the Name, Author, and Description sections.
5. Set “Supported VS Editions” to Visual Studio Ultimate.
6. Save all open files and close them.
7. Delete the file VSIXProject.cs from the project

VSSDK Beta 2 Bug Workarounds

Unfortunately there are a couple of bugs in the current VSSDK Beta 2 that we have to work around. I’ve been told they will be fixed in an update release but until then, let me take you through the project cleanup required to make this work:

Step 1 – Tweak the .csproj file

1. Right click on your project and choose “Unload Project”.
2. Right click again on your project and choose “Edit Yourprojectname.csproj”
3. In the topmost property group, look for the XML tag <IncludeAssemblyInVSIXContainer>. It will be set to false. Change it to true.
4. Save the .csproj file and reload it into Visual Studio.

Step 2 – Tweak the .vsixmanifest file

1. Right click on the file “source.extension.vsixmanifest” and choose View Code
2. At the bottom of the file in the section called <Content> add the following line. (Yes, those vertical bars are important.)

   <MefComponent>|Yourprojectname|</MefComponent> 

3. Save and close the file.

Say “Hello World!”

Now let’s make this thing fly. We won’t get into any complicated UML or model manipulation in this article. Instead we will just add a new menu item to the context menu of the UML Class Designer. When clicked, the menu item will say Hello World.

1. Add a Project Reference to System.Windows.Forms (a simple way to get a MessageBox).
2. Add a new class named HelloWorldCommandExtension.cs to the project
3. Have your new class implement the ICommandExtension interface and add the following attributes to your class (you will need to add the required using directives):

   [Export(typeof(ICommandExtension))] 
   [ClassDesignerExtension] 

4. Delete the body of the QueryStatus method
5. Replace the Text property implementation as shown here:

   public string Text
   {
       get { return "Hello World!"; }
   }
   

6. Replace the Execute method as follows:

   public void Execute(IMenuCommand command)
   {
       System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show("Hello World!");
   }

Testing Your Extension

The nice thing about using the VSIX project template is that is sets everything up for debugging and testing for you using the Visual Studio Experimental hive. To run your extension without debugging, press Ctrl+F5. To run with debugging enabled, just press F5.

One the Experimental Hive is up and running, create a new Modeling Project, add a new Class diagram, and right click on the surface. You should see your “Hello World!” menu item and choosing it should display the message box. Voila!

Next Steps

In the next part of this series, I will show you how to create new model elements in the Model Store and display them on the diagram surface. Subsequent articles will explore other diagram types and more complex scenarios including creating a full VSPackage.

This morning we released to MSDN the Beta 2 release of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 to MSDN. See Soma’s blog post for the official bits.

There is so much good stuff coming in Beta 2 it is hard to keep track of it all. Over in the Arch Tooling team where I work, we’ve done a ton of work on increasing the performance of the UML, Layer and Architecture designers we’ve made. We have also added a BUNCH of new and cool MEF-based extensibility hooks into our designers so customers can add new and interesting features that we may not have thought of.

We’ve been dogfooding this release (client and server) internally for quite a while now and I have to say I really like it. It feels good, it looks good and it does what I want to do.

Probably the biggest thing people will talk about initially, however is the new SKU changes we’re making in 2010. I remember way back before I joined Microsoft I criticized the “role-based” SKU system as not actually aligning with how real teams get work done. As Brian Harry explains on his SKU changes post, we’ve fixed that by adopting a SKU system very similar to that used by Windows and Office:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN: the comprehensive suite of application lifecycle management tools for software teams to ensure quality results from design to deployment.
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Premium with MSDN: a complete toolset for developers to deliver scalable, high quality applications.
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional with MSDN: the essential tool for professional development tasks to assist developers in implementing their ideas easily.

As you can see this is a much cleaner SKU model and we’re excited to see how customers respond.

This Beta 2 release is available on MSDN subscriber downloads NOW and will be generally available on Wednesday October 21. .NET Framework Beta 2 will be released in English, Japanese, German and Arabic.  VS Beta 2 will be released in English, Japanese, and German.

There have also been a bunch of updates recently to the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) website. A serious design update and ton of new social networking features should help people get the information they need faster than ever. Scott Hanselman blogged about it last week.

We all hope you try this release out and give us tons of feedback on how it works for you and your business.

Edit: Added link to Brian Harry’s SKU post and some descriptive content about the SKUs.

It has been all done for a little over a week, and I love it. As I said in my last post, I decided, for the first time in almost 20 years, to build a machine from scratch for my home-office. I spent a bunch of time chatting with friends at work and who I play World of Warcraft with, and I think I ended up with a pretty kicking kit.

The order came in 5 shipments, which had me a bit freaked out that 4 would arrive and the CPU would be a day late stuck in Kansas, but that didn’t happen. The whole thing arrived on time, and in one big pile of boxes. In addition to the order I described last time, I also ordered another Dell E228WFP to go with the one I already had.

Construction of the machine was painless. Far more painless than I thought it would be. I was a bit worried about screwing it up, so I went pretty slowly. Opened each box, looked at what was there, set the instructions aside, etc.

The case is pretty big. It has four fans, including a big 200mm one in the top. You’d think it would be loud, and I guess it is louder than my laptop was, but I don’t find it distracting.

First thing to go in was the motherboard. I decided to put the mobo in before installing the CPU and memory and probably would do it that way next time too. Brad Wilson suggested doing the CPU and RAM on my desk to make it easier, but I figured moving that sucker around all loaded up would suck.

The mobo has tons of ports (USB, eSATA and more) on the back and came with a little panel that slides into a slot on the case to expose all the ports. That was nice and simple. Motherboard slid right in, crewed it down and moved on to the next step.

I bought a 750W power supply. Some would say that is too big, but the graphics card claimed that I needed a minimum 550W supply and the motherboard/CPU wanted 140W so I didn’t want to come up short. It came in a velvet bag like a bottle of Crown Royale, which made my laugh. Tons of connectors on it, which is great. Dropped right in, no issues. On to the next step.

I was a bit concerned about getting the CPU in there right. I’d heard stories of people breaking off pins, or breaking the lockdown clamps and crap like that. I guess going slowly was on my side though… it dropped right in. The only issue I had was getting the heatsink clamp to grab on both sides. I had to push A LOT harder than I expected. I was a bit nervous pushing that hard and had a friend on the phone saying, “Don’t worry man, I’ve done dozens of those and never broken one. Just push on it.” Haha… he was right. In it went.

After that it was smooth sailing. RAM went in next. Who knew RAM came with heat dissipation fins these days? Wow. Video card after that. Man that’s a big sucker. Takes two slots on the case, has its own big ol’ fan and two external power connectors.

Hard disk, DVD came last, then got into routing power and data cables. All in all it came together quite nicely I think and I would happily do it again. I do expect I’ll upgrade this next year to a double graphics setup. Since I’m using nVidia it will be SLI based which means I probably have to buy another mobo. That is the only downside to the sweet bundle deal I got. I’ll also add another 4GB RAM sometime later this year to bring me up to 8GB.

I’m running Windows7 RTM x64 which I love. Best operating system Microsoft has ever produced IMHO. WoW screams on this machine, pulling appx 75-100 fps with most of the graphics sliders turned way, way up. Here is the final setup on my desk showing the two monitors and my work laptop.

I’m using Synergy to share my mouse and keyboard onto the laptop which effectively makes it like a third monitor without having to actually hook it up that way. (More coming on Synergy in a follow-up post.)

I’ve been a gamer for a few years now, mostly playing World of Warcraft but also occasionally spending time on other games. I’ve never actually owned a good gaming machine, however. I’ve always played on a laptop, mostly using and external monitor, keyboard and mouse.

For a few months I’ve been considering building out a new machine from scratch. It was a bit intimidating given how long it has been since I’ve played in this space, but with the help of a few friends who know this stuff, I think I picked out a pretty good setup.

I went off to NewEgg.com and started picking parts. They’ve got lots of combo deals, reviews and spec information so they really are a great place to do this from. I also used Tom’s Hardware Guide to compare important things like CPUs and Video chipsets.

When I finally clicked BUY last night, here’s what I had decided on:

• Case – Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower
• CPU - AMD Phenom II X4 945 Deneb 3.0GHz Quad-Core
• Power Supply - CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready
• Hard disk - Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s
• Motherboard - MSI 790FX-GD70 AM3 AMD 790FX ATX AMD Motherboard
• Video - EVGA 896-P3-1170-AR GeForce GTX 275 896MB
• DVDR - SAMSUNG DVD Burner Black SATA Model SH-S223L
• RAM - CORSAIR DOMINATOR 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM 1600

I would have liked to get a 10,000 rpm drive but I got a sweet deal on a CPU/HDD/Mobo bundle and went with it for now. I’ll also probably add 4GB RAM later to bring it up to 8GB total.

Also, I’m not really one for the glowy blue case thing, but the airflow on that case and the great reviews it gets sold me.

We’ll see… I’ll post more once I start putting it together.