I decided to re-build dasblog (the blog software that I use) on Whidbey (VS 2005) over the holidays. It is something that I had always wanted to do and it seems like the dasblog folks have not yet publicly taken that on. Before anyone gets any strange ideas, I have no desire for a thinkjot-like schism, but wanted to move the codebase to Whidbey and work on getting the software to run under partial-trust. If this all works out, and the dasblog team wants to adopt my changes, cool, otherwise, I'm going to just use it myself.

Anyway, I decided to tackle this task over the holidays. Believe it or not, I almost exclusively use the free VS Express SKUs for my coding work. The "free" part isn't a big deal for me as I have a full copy of VS team suite a couple meters away from me, and I can download and install any program (including "Microsoft Bob") from the MS network that I want. Still, the Express SKUs are super convenient since I can download and install them in about 10mins and they satisfy most of my needs. Anyway, I downloaded the dasblog source and started playing with it. It became clear that I needed to use both VS express C# and VS express Web to get this done since the Web product didn't appear to support multiple projects in a single solution; in fact, it didn't appear to support the solution concept at all. And I then realized that since VS C# doesn't support JIT attach debugging (due to licensing issues), that the whole thing wasn't going to work at all. That's when I reached over for the quite large (requires two hands) VS team suite box to do some "real developlment" ;)

After a fairly lengthy install (and I didn't even install MSDN since I use the web mostly), I started back at it. I was able to get the web and class library projects into one solution in VS. Cool! I then hit F5 and it was immediately clear that something was terribly broken. The web project launched as expected, but was immediately detached from the debugger. Huh? I tried a couple more times, and I had the same experience. I was able to attach VS to WebDev.WebServer.Exe and then refresh the page, and then my breakpoints were hit. This approach though is anything but a good experience.

I had heard that there were some incompatibilities with VS on Vista, but I was under the impression that it was more niche issues, of which this is not. It is also very strange that I didn't have these same problems with the Express products, which I've been using on Vista for months. I wonder why the full product has some additional problems. I'm sure someone in building 41 knows.

Time to install VS 2005 SP1. I went to the following page. I downloaded the Vista-specific update. That didn't work, claiming that I was missing a file or two. I then downloaded and installed the non-Vista-specific SP1 package, which is just shy of 1/2 GB. Ouch! That worked. Upon launching VS, it claimed that I needed the Vista-specific update. Oh, I see, you need to install the generic VS 2005 service pack, and then the Vista-specific update. That was not at all clear to me from the VS 2005 SP1 page. Grrrr. Anyhow, now you can avoid the trouble that I had.

I then launch VS, but it claims that I need to launch the app elevated. I was actually expecting that, but thought that they would have manifested the application to force the elevation dialog. I guess not, or maybe that's still coming. Developers are going to go nuts if they have to remember to right click on the VS 2005 icon and hit "Run as administrator" every time, or just turn off UAC on their dev-boxes, which is a bad idea.

OK, launch VS again, but elevated, and voila, everything is working correctly again. Peace and harmony have now returned to my development experience.

I'm very thanksful that the VS team has pulled off this pretty significant service pack ... *before* Vista is generally available. I'm glad to be back and productive again. The directions on MSDN could use some improvement.