Get Started With The New Stuff

So now that all of this new stuff for Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 is available (see Updates for Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 from yesterday), you may be scratching your head thinking where to get started. Fortunately, when it’s all broken down into what needs to be installed where, it’s not so bad.

Before getting to that though, it’s important to highlight a few things:

• Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 includes all updates and patches that precede it as well as the Load Testing Feature Pack and the Visualization and Modeling Feature Pack as they are all designed to be installed on the Visual Studio client.
• The Load Testing Feature Pack doesn’t include any new software. It’s a licensing change that enables unlimited virtual users if you have Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN. All you need to do is download vUser license keys from your MSDN Subscriber Download Center.
• The Project Server Feature Pack is a separate install because it is intended to be installed on your Project Server server. All the TFS (client and server) changes necessary to work with the new Project Server extensions are in SP1.

Yesterday’s post didn’t include these additional goodies:

• The Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Power Tools including the Backup and Restore, Windows Shell Extension, and the TFS Build Power Tools all got an update as well. Download the updates from here: Main Power Tools, Build Extensions, MSSCCI plugin. Functional details of these tools can be found here.
• Team Explorer Everywhere also has a service pack that can be downloaded from the MSDN Subscriber Download Center or here. You can find out more information about the service pack here. For more information about Team Explorer Everywhere, the tool and plug-in that allows you to access TFS from within Eclipse-based environments, check out the Visual Studio Team Explorer Everywhere 2010 home.

With the important things covered, let’s get all the installations started. Brian Harry walks you through everything you have to do in his post Installing all the new stuff. Remember, if you only use Visual Studio 2010 (and not TFS and/or Project Server), you only need to look at the instructions for the client installation. If you’re running Team Foundation Server 2010, you’ll need to also look at the instructions for the TFS server, the TFS Build machine, and the TFS proxy.

When You’re Done Installing

Did the installations go smoothly? Did you encounter any issues that others should know about? Any gotchas that would be good to know before starting or after completing the installation? Share your installation experience in the discussion on the Ignite Your Coding LinkedIn group.