A few days ago the VS 2010 Beta 2 was announced and I snagged it from MSDN  (MSDN is also sporting a new look and feel which is a  nice change!).  This evening I finally got around to installing it on my laptop.  For Beta 1 I had installed it to my alternate boot-to-VHD copy of Windows 7 Ultimate.  But I was feeling risky tonight and installed it on my main copy of Windows 7 Ultimate. 
The full install weighed in at 6.4gb and included all the bits needed to start developing in Microsoft’s next evolution of Visual Studio. 

To get started with VS 2010 I decided to take a copy of the Linq2NIEM project and convert it to 2010 to test out Xml Intellisense, MS Test Changes for VS unit testing as well as the VB Linq to Xml queries which I have grown very fond of in my previous work with NIEM Xml.

I hit a few snags during the conversion process:

  • The copy of the project still included source binding files – those were removed by the conversion wizard.
  • The Linq2Niem class library and Linq2NiemTests projects did not convert successfully with the solution.  I had to manually convert each project.
  • Post conversion there were target framework errors pointed out by the Test project.  I changed the target framework on the Linq2Niem class library but discovered that you cannot change the target framework on a Unit Test project.  This was a little disappointing, but I was able to just create a new project and import my existing test class file and it worked like a charm.

Other things I noticed:

  • VS 2010 picked up my existing Vibrant Ink theme from my VS 2008 install.  This was great because I would have hated to have to go manually pick all those colors :)
  • Overall performance is improved from Beta 1, or so it seems.  Intellisense seems more responsive and the Xml Intellisense seems much faster than in VS 2008.
  • VB Linq to Xml Intellisense does not provide hints for Abstract element substitutions.  The NIEM nc:DateRepresentation is a good example.  nc:DateRepresentation can be substituted as nc:Date or nc:DateTime, but neither of those shows up as a choice.  This is how things were in VS 2008 so it seems like a connect bug report/suggestion is called for here.  You can work around it but you have to fight intellisense to get it to do what you need it to.
    vs2010_xml_intellisense_bad1 
    Figure 1: At this node the actual element should be nc:ActivityDate – but it’s not displayed
    vs2010_xml_intellisense_bad2 
    Figure 2: You can see in the query above – nc:DateTime is the appropriate element, however, only the abstract date representation is shown.
    vs2010_xml_intellisense_good1 vs2010_xml_intellisense_good2
    Figures 3 & 4 show how the Xml editor properly provides hints for the substitutable elements.  Looks like the issue is really in the VB Linq to Xml parser.

Lastly, how about some gratuitous Windows 7 + VS 2008 “Vibrant Ink” porn?  Looking good!

pc porn