Erwyn van der Meer

Microsoft has released the October 2006 CTP of Visual Studio Codename "Orcas". If you have the available bandwith go download it here.

It is a bit larger than the September 2006 CTP. This time it is a 4.05 GB self-extracting EXE split over 6 parts for the Orcas differencing disk. This works on top of the 2.72 GB VHD file for the base image. After turning off undo disks, booting the VPC for the first time, installing the Virtual Machine Additions and starting Visual Studio, the VHD of the differencing disk was 10.0 GB.

The version numbering mayhem that I blogged about previously, still continues with this CTP.

The build number of the 3.5 part of the framework has changed to 61010:

The .NET 3.0 build that is included is still the same old version 4310 as in the September CTP.

This is the content of the Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5.61010 folder:

New with respect to the September CTP are System.Data.Entity.dll and System.Xml.XLinq.dll. There are still no .NET 3.0 or .NET 3.5 (LINQ) related project templates available in Visual Studio. You will have to do everything manually. There is no Windows SDK included in the image so don't go look for any help on developing for .NET 3.0 or .NET 3.5 there.

There is more new .NET 3.5 framework stuff in System.Core.dll when compared with the September CTP. These are the main namespaces in the October CTP:

To create a very simple LINQ program I had to manually add a reference to the System.Core.dll assembly. The .NET 3.5 Framework folder contains version 8.00.61010 of the C# compiler. When building the program VS "Orcas" seems to be using a .NET 2.0 version of the C# compiler, version 8.00.50727.192, yet it understands the var keyword that is being introduced in C# 3.0.

The output window in VS says:

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Csc.exe /noconfig /nowarn:1701,1702 /errorreport:prompt /warn:4 /define:DEBUG;TRACE /reference:C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5.61010\System.Core.dll /reference:C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\System.Data.dll /reference:C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\System.dll /reference:C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\System.Xml.dll /debug+ /debug:full /filealign:512 /optimize- /out:obj\Debug\ConsoleApplication1.exe /target:exe Program.cs Properties\AssemblyInfo.cs

Maybe I am still confused as to the red vs green bit changes in .NET 3.5. It would seem this is a red bit change, while I thought it would be a green bit change. The "normal" .NET 2.0 C# compiler has the version number 8.00.50727.42. If someone understands how this works, please let me know.

BTW: The C# 3.0 (3.5?!) compiler executable is gigantic when compared to the 2.0 version: 1.13 MB vs 69 kB. The stuff that was previously implemented in cscomp.dll seems to have moved into the executable itself.

All in all, I think this CTP still doesn't qualify as being really useful.