I'm sure there are many developers out there with "older" systems that are completely capable of running Windows 8 64-bit and Visual Studio 2012 but are not able to develop and test Windows Phone 8 applications because of Microsoft's choice to make the Windows Phone 8 emulator a Hyper-V virtual machine. There should be a mechanism to run the emulator using either VMware Player or VirtualBox which will use SLAT if it's present but will continue to work if it isn't or update Hyper-V to do the same.

I don't understand this choice as I am able to write applications for Windows 8 using the built in simulator and I would think that is more involved than developing for the phone. Making it MORE difficult to develop for the phone isn't smart when you need more apps to compete with other ecosystems.

Something that would make code more portable for win 7 phones! Other mobile platforms support C++, which makes porting between platforms easier. Look, I'm not espousing love for C++. It's a language with problems, for sure. But for those of us who want to program for multiple platforms, we don't want to have to port between say, C# and Java or, even worse, C# and objective-C. I am aware that there exist C# to objective-C guidelines published by Microsoft, and that Java and C# are relatively easy to port to one another. That's not the point. The point is that a lot of developers would like to be able to have as much of their code be portable as possible. Some things, like the GUI, obviously have to be re-tailored no matter what. We expect that. But we'd like the "Model" part of our MVC to be able to be in a common language. For years, C++ has been this common language. If we at *least* had Managed C++, we could get somewhere. Again, I'm not a C++ lover. Managed languages are the way of the future. But whatever the language and its nature, some of us would like to be able to make portable programs without having to buy expensive API imitators like MonoDroid.

It is not currently possible (?) to

1) install a WP8 .xap package to a connected WP8 device from the command line
2) execute an installed application on a connected WP8 device from the command line
3) reinstall/uninstall an existing application on a connected WP8 device from the command line
4) receive stdout and stderr or other form of logging (OutputDebugString?) from native C/C++/C++CX applications running on a connected WP8 device on the command line.

These are all extremely important features for continuous unit testing, and primitive requirements for being able to automate WP8 ports of existing software for detecting regressions.

We develop a cross-platform graphics engine and a game that runs on Windows, Linux, OSX, Android, iOS, NaCl, HTML5 and a few other systems. All of these systems support command line automation, but there is no similar feature for Windows Phone 8, which hinders undertaking a serious effort of supporting WP8 as a first-tier deployment platform for the engine.

I can't figure this out, and nobody at Microsoft has been able to tell me either despite spending 250$ to not find out.

In VS2010 with Phone SDK 7 on Win 7 I was able to set breakpoints and debug javascript. It worked well and is absolutely necessary if you want to build cross platform code.

Now I migrated up to Win8 and javascript debugging doesn't work at all.

I has since given up on developing for WinPhone and will target the others because they have development environments that work.

What is going on MS?

Why can't we debug js, and how come nobody in the company knows what is going on with this?

Spent 250$ to open a Micosoft Support Case and got zero info, zero value, and zero ability to debug js.

James

See this page for users with this issue
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w8itprogeneral/thread/6f383b2a-3a4a-472f-a966-cda0ce646e37

Win Phone 8 SDK requires Hyper-V. Hyper-V disables CPU throttling I don't know the specifics of the details of what is happening behind the scenes, but I can observe what happens on my laptop before and after installing Win Phone 8 SDK.

After installing the SDK, I can observe that my CPU Frequency in Resource Monitor no longer fluctuates, it stays steady at my CPU's rated speed. Additionally, when I perform any CPU-intensive task, my CPU temp goes to 95 Celsius, whereas it used to stick around 80 Celsius before the SDK. Hyper-V is the direct cause of this behavior since it blocks Windows 8's ability to throttle my CPU.

This is ridiculous. Microsoft's products are directly causing excessive wear on my development machine. This needs to be fixed asap.
Thank you.