Visual Studio could be a lightweight shell with only the basic project templates installed. Whenever you then need to add new template such as Windows Phone, Silverlight, Azure, ... you could create an empty project and use NuGet to install all the extra files and UI to get it to work. And as is the case with NuGet, this install is relative to the solution/project that you are using. NuGet all of these artifacts from an official package server, and link it locally to the solution.

This would be benificial for us 'consultancy' folk to keep VS to a minimal install and only see all the extra file templates, context menu-options, etc. based on the solution you are actually working on.

A second benifit would be to be able to check-in all the required VS artifacts into Source Control so that when a new developer starts on the project, they install the basics, and then 'Get' the solution from Source Control and they could be up and running.

A third benefit would be that the Team Build Agents would not all need a full install of VS Ultimate just to be able to build some types of solutions (.targets files and dll's in the GAC missing). Again, doing a Get from Source Control should place all required files in the build folder and Team Build should be able to pick everything up from there.

A fourth benefit is that as new versions of frameworks (Asp.net Mvc, Silverlight, Azure) become available, it should be much easier to update the solutions, the NuGet package could do its work to upgrade the project.

A closely related fifth benefit is the acutal opposite. Suppose we have build a project with Asp.net Mvc 3 and today (they are going fast) we already have Asp.Net Mvc 5 on a new project we are working on. Now we need to do some maintenance, or new work for the Mvc 3 project. When we open up the Mvc 3 solution, our IDE still only knows about and behaves like it used to. We can still code and debug like we used to, there is no interference.

Problem:
I work for a large organization where we have 1000's of developers and we are constantly battling losing our admin rights. In order to get the software we need we have to have it packaged by the bank and pushed to the users machine. In the case of Visual Studio 2010 which is huge in itself, when a service pack is released we have to increase the install time even more by adding the Service Pack as a post install action.

Would like to increase client satisfaction by having available an install that includes the service pack(s) in the main installer, whether it's for 2010 or for Dev 11, in either case would love to see it happen.

Visual Studio creates a new folder in My Documents with every version. Over time, if the user requires many different versions of Visual Studio installed, this pollutes the folder. My Documents is supposed to be where I keep, well, my documents.

This even goes again Microsoft's own software design guidelines, if I remember them right.

Most of the subfolders should be moved to the existing AppData Visual Studio folder. The Projects subfolder has no reason to exist, since you might as well default the My Documents folder when creating new projects (the user can obviouly change this at the time, it's just a default location, as with any other app.)

I'm writing this on behalf of the thousands of other Visual Studio users out there who have had nightmares trying to uninstall previous versions of VS. Thus cumulatively losing hundreds of thousands of productive work hours.

During this year, I had installed the following programs/components on my system:
* Visual Studio 2012 Express for Desktop
* Visual Studio 2012 Express for Web
* Team Foundation Server Express
* SQL Server Express
* SQL Server Data Tools
* LightSwitch 2011 trial (which created a VS 2010 installation)
* Visual Studio 2010 Tools for SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP2
* Entity Framework Designer for Visual Studio 2012
* Visual Studio Tools for Applications
* Visual Studio Tools for Office
* F# Tools for Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web

Two weeks ago I discovered that third-party controls can't be added to the Express versions of VS. I'm disabled and live on a fixed income, so spending $500 for the Professional version, in order to continue my hobby programming with a third-party control, was a tough decision. But I bought it.

When it arrived, I figured it would take an hour or two to remove the above programs and then I could install the Pro version. I wanted to have a clean file system and Registry for the new install of VS Pro.

It's now SIX DAYS later, and my spending 12-14 hours a day working on this alone. Removing these programs was the biggest nightmare I have ever faced with Microsoft products in my 30 years of being a Microsoft customer. Each one of these products automatically installed 5, 10 or more additional components, along with many thousands of files and individual Registry entries.

It took me four days alone, just to successfully remove the LightSwitch 2011 trial, and the entire VS 2010 product it installed. Restoring a 600 GB disk drive (5 hours) from backup after every removal attempt failed miserably. I finally gave up, spent 6 hours downloading the entire VS 2010 ISO and installed it. Only then, was I able to successfully uninstall LightSwitch 2011 and VS 2010.

As for the remaining products listed above, the uninstall programs do NOT UNinstall everything that they automatically INstall. Every single, automatically INstalled component, had to be removed manually, one at a time. Along with manually creating a System Restore point before each removal attempt, in case it failed. In total, I spent 12 hours uninstalling the remaining products.

I have a Registry search program where I can enter a search string and it will list ALL occurrences it finds in the Registry. I checked "visual studio", "visualstudio", "vbexpress", "vcexpress", "SQL Server", etc. I never finished searching for all the possible Visual Studio and SQL Server strings because the results being returned were eye-popping. Each search was returning 1,000, 3,000, even 7,000 individual Registry entries that had NOT been removed by the individual uninstall processes. This is TENS of THOUSANDS of never to be used again Registry entries that these programs simply left behind. The size of my Registry file is now a stunning 691 MB!

All of this frustration and wasted time is completely avoidable! And my case is not "isolated". There are hundreds of thousands of hits on Google regarding this problem, that point to Microsoft forums, MS Blog sites, and many independent Windows developer support forums on the web.

Microsoft really should provide an uninstall program that actually works, by UNinstalling everything it INstalls -- for each product it sells -- including Visual Studio. The downloadable (from Microsoft) uninstall program for VS 2010 does not work correctly and does not remove everything that VS 2010 installs.

When a program installs multiple individual components, tens of thousands of files and Registry entries, it SHOULD have an uninstaller that removes ALL of this, automatically, just like the install program. The OS and Registry keep track of dependencies and you folks know what the removal order should be for all of these products. So the team that creates the INstall program for each product, should also create the UNinstall program. And, the product should NOT ship until this program works correctly and fully.

You have ONE install program for each version of Visual Studio, that asks the user what they want to install and then does it ALL automatically. You should also have ONE uninstall program that does the same thing in reverse...
* Collect info on all the VS-related products and components currently installed
* Ask the user what they want to remove
* Determine if their selections make sense
* Check for dependencies by using your knowledge and experience, along with the computer's stored information, and warn the user as needed
* Decide on the removal order
* Then do it ALL automatically -- removing ALL files and ALL Registry entries

When you release a new product version, ADD the new version and additional decision logic to this existing program, do NOT create a new uninstall program. This way, the user can also remove previous version products, components, etc. ONE uninstall program *should be* able to uninstall every version of Visual Studio released in the past 10 years, along with every single component that was available with it, AND all of the associated files and Registry entries.

Please don't tell us why it CAN'T be done. Rather, figure out a way to do it, and then make it happen, just like every other software company out there has already done for their products. Even FREEware providers have better uninstall processes than Microsoft. This is a sad state for Microsoft and it should be rectified SOON.

Thank you.

I just came off a nasty situation where VS installation got hosed over a period of a year and half. I thought staying up to date with patches was a good thing, never realized it could hose the VS Setup completely. Details is in this forum post http://forums.asp.net/p/1772359/4850404.aspx/1?p=True&t=634657393972716075 .

End of the the Windows Update/Visual Studio Update/ASP.NET Update and other sub-component updates, ALL affect the basic Visual Studio setup. And affect it to a point where the original Visual Studio installer becomes completely useless for maintenance purposes. This needs to be improved/fixed. One way would be to build an installer that followed the XCopy deploy moto of .NET.

Details of my trials here http://sumitmaitra.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/rant-on-visual-studio-maintenance-experience/

Dear Visual Studio Team,

Since you are using only 1 GB of 4.7 GB on the VS 2012 Pro DVD, it would be very helpful if the DVD contained at least the largest of the downloadable documentation files. Downloading gigabytes of documentation with a 256 kbps DSL Internet connection, will take me DAYS. Here are some suggested inclusions...

* 320 MB - Visual Studio 2012 Fundamentals
* 838 MB - .NET Framework 4.5
* 617 MB - .NET Framework 4
* 8 MB - Visual Basic and Visual C#
* 59 MB - Visual C++
* 202 MB - ALM and Team Foundation Server
* 577 MB - Windows Desktop App Development
* 40 MB - Books Online for SQL Server 2012
* 178 MB - Developer Reference for SQL Server 2012

The total is 2839 MB, and there is still space remaining on the DVD for more documentation ... Blend, LightSwitch, Office and SharePoint?

Thank you.

-Don

I would like to provide feedback for pre-release versions but there are many obvious reasons I do not want to install the pre-release versions of Visual Studio 11. It is very time consuming, it can pollute the developer's environment, uninstall bugs, etc. Think about the time it takes to download and install all the components and multiply that by the number of developers. That's a lot of redundant time.

If you could provide an option to download a Virtual PC file that contains Windows 8, VS11, SQL2012 preinstalled, etc. We would be able to provide the feedback and ideas on IDE usablity much more quickly. You may want to provide various preinstalled combinations of versions of windows, sql server, VS 11, etc.