Coding Horror: VS.NET 2005 RTM

September 17, 2005

VS.NET 2005 RTM

Near the end of PDC, Microsoft dropped everyone a copy of the latest version of Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite:

About Visual Studio .NET 2005 RTM

This is version 2.0.50727.26 (RTM.050727-2600), compared to Beta 2's 2.0.50215.44 (beta2.050215-4400). Unfortunately, unlike Beta 2, it doesn't have a "go live" license. It may not matter since the launch date is November 9, less than a month and a half from now.

In order to install this version, you have to meticulously uninstall the prior beta. Uninstalling VS.NET 2005 is.. kind of a pain. There are several pages at Microsoft documenting the right order to uninstall the twenty-three components that make up VS.NET. If you don't uninstall things in the right order, you may have problems. To handle partial uninstalls, there's a VS.NET beta cleanup tool from Microsoft, which is documented on the Beta 2 Install Issues page.

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Comments

Um, it's not RTM, it's RC1. There's a difference. This is probably not what they'll release. (And, for that matter, there have also been 2 CTPs released after beta 2.)
Personally, I find the August CTP and RC1 to both have a much less buggy WinForms designer.

Mike Swaim on September 18, 2005 10:03 PM

Look at the version, specifically where it says "RTM".

Marty Thompson on September 19, 2005 11:44 AM

Who knows, maybe they'll be fixing critical (showstopper type) bugs in VS.NET 2005 right up until the ship date of Nov. 7.

The build date appears to be 7-27-05 (RTM.050727) which is surprisingly "old" for a DVD we got around 9-15-05..

I assume it takes at least two weeks to press the CD/DVDs, so they probably need to be 100% done by mid October.

Jeff Atwood on September 19, 2005 01:39 PM

Despite what's mentioned in the about box and in the comments above, it's not RTM or RC1. The build handed-out at PDC05 is RC (without number)!

David Boschmans on September 20, 2005 02:42 AM

2.0.50727.26 is the 26th build made after the jdate was frozen in the version #. It is difficult to determine what day that was because sometimes there are weekend builds and sometimes there aren't.

If you do want to determine the date it was built, looking at the linker timestamp in one of the dlls is the best way: dumpbin /headers devenv.exe | findstr time.

Steve Steiner on September 20, 2005 03:39 PM

FWIW, for those that are itching to install the RC ... the Go Live license has been amended to cover the Release Candidate. Also, you (or your clients) don’t need to sign it again if you have already signed it.

KevinC on September 26, 2005 10:00 AM