Vista dates shifting
Well, I'm sure you've heard the news of Windows Vista's ship dates slipping from a lot of sources so I'm sure I'm not revealing any confidential information by posting about it.
From my standpoint, this is really frustrating. Since the Windows SDK has been committed to sim-shipping with the OS, our deadlines slip as well. As you saw in last week's post, we were slipstreaming for the old date, and were due to meet that deadline with a good quality product. Now for us we have a couple more weeks of dev time opening up. That's good in some ways, since it will give us additional time to work on features and bug fixes. But this extension is a little bit like being told you're going to run a half-marathon while in the middle of running a 10k race. You've planned your strategies around having everything planned for a certain end result, but now your result is different. The finishing kick is different, and the approach you take to the distance is different. It's an odd sensation.
The good thing for setup in the Windows SDK is that this will allow us to spend still more time drilling into bug-fixing. We have a fair number of open bugs at this point - everything from setting up new shortcuts to a setup failure on IA64 machines to the issue of how to manage low disk space when the user saves a very large file as the SDK is installing. Lots of small little things that you might not notice if they're fixed, but you would notice if you ran into them.
Setup's mantra for Beta 2 has been hardening. We want to remove as many points of failure as possible. We have a problem that our Feb CTP logs don't give sufficient information for us to track down errors. We've fixed that. We have low disk detection built in, finally. We're improving web download. This extension will allow us to do more things like that. We want setup to be something you can take for granted, not a source of anxiety. We're working on that. And this extra time will allow us to do even better.
Comments
Anonymous
March 28, 2006
The comment has been removedAnonymous
March 28, 2006
PingBack from http://www.windowsobserver.com/2006/03/28/windows-vista-delay-also-causes-slip-with-windows-vista-sdk/Anonymous
March 28, 2006
Believe it or not, running out of disk space during install was something I did run into with the Feb CTP. I like to have a (relatively) small partition for Windows, aroudn 8-10GB, and since the installation directory can't be changed, the SDK installs in there. I noticed as I got down to about 50MB free that it was about to run, but my rush to copy files out of my documents to another drive wasn't quite quick enough, and it errored.
I also don't think I saw any estimate of disk space the SDK might take up after I'd chosen what features I wanted installed. Is this something that has been fixed too?
My only other gripe that was it took a very long time to install, while I didn't time it exactly, I have a feeling it was in the region of an hour to write about 1GB (?) of data? Sometimes the progress bar would sit for 30-60 seconds on a file that was only a few KB in size.
I look forward to seeing the new SDK (presumably alongside the next CTP?). Keep up the good, and on-time, work.
Adam MilesAnonymous
March 28, 2006
The comment has been removedAnonymous
March 28, 2006
This has nothing to do with the SDK Setup, but it is something that has become increasingly noticable as more and more of Vista's APIs get documented:
The entire Shell Reference subsection of the documentation needs to be reorganized. Right now it is divided into Functions, Interfaces, Structures, etc. And inside each of these are HUNDREDS of entries. The shell keeps getting bigger (especially with Vista) and it is just begging for a reorganization.
Just by looking through the existing pages (from the Vista SDK), I see a lot of "shell sub-topics" into which the pages could be divided. For example:
- General namespace stuff (IShellFolder, IPersistFolder, etc.)
- DefView and all related messages/functions
- PIDL management functions
- Shell extensions (thumbnail providers, etc.)
- Docking windows/deskbands/etc.
- Property system
- Search/structured query
- Credential provider
- Known folder
- Sync mgr
- Share mgr
- File dialogs
- DWM
Most of these subsections are new for Vista, so now would be a great time to get these topics divided out.
I love shell programming and I would love it if you could pass this suggestion along to whomever is responsible for shell documentation. Thanks!Anonymous
March 29, 2006
PatriotB, here's your reply directly from the team that's working on that section:
How convenient, then, that we're doing just that (though not so much with the reference section - maybe we should rethink that). This is great feedback - thanks! He also added that we've attempted it before, but so much of the material has fallen into the "general" category that it wasn't so successful. As you mention, Vista is more compartmentalized than the Shell may have been in the past, so hopefully things will turn out better this round.Anonymous
January 25, 2008
PingBack from http://softwareinformation.247blogging.info/jason-sackss-windows-sdk-blog-vista-dates-shifting/Anonymous
June 01, 2009
PingBack from http://woodtvstand.info/story.php?id=12413Anonymous
June 16, 2009
PingBack from http://topalternativedating.info/story.php?id=1133Anonymous
June 18, 2009
PingBack from http://ebeanbagchair.info/story.php?id=547Anonymous
June 19, 2009
PingBack from http://mydebtconsolidator.info/story.php?id=22570