The offline installation method (run vs2012.2.exe /layout) is sub-optimal and has too many moving pieces. Please provide future (and current if possible) visual studio updates as an ISO.

I work as a consultant on a variety of customer sites, often on virtual machines with no / little internet connectivity. I also work on a laptop which is often disconnected, and sometimes it is connected via a mobile device which would cost hundreds of dollars to download updates.

In most of these situations, the simplest thing that works (and has worked for a long period of time) is to store and copy an ISO file with the appropriate installer.
Providing an ISO for software from MSDN means that I know that I have an accurate unmodified copy of the installer (I can check the checksum matches). This prevents media copy issues, virus infection, etc.

An ISO allows me to efficiently store the installer for use by VMs, or mounting on physical machines as needed without taking up any extra unneccesary space. It means that when I want to share this installer between several developers on physical machines each person only needs to copy a single file. This is an atomic action rather in comparison to a copy folder full of files. It is either done or not done.

An example of one of the sub-optimal parts of the current offline installer method. The downloader spends a lot of time acquiring the software. There is no indication of how long / how much data this is going to take. In VS Update 1, I started an update fetch on my laptop near the end of the day. It had not finished by the time I needed to leave for home. I paused my machine, but could not pause the download (only cancel). This meant I was unable to use my laptop connected during my commute home (it would have cost me an unknown amount of MB * $0.10 / MB). Partial download / pause / resume capability should be a solved problem by now (MSDN has a download manager, there are many other download managers that work for this purpose)

Note: this request is superficially similar to http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/3378035-standalone-installer-for-vsupdate-kb2707250-exe-wo Please do not merge. This request is explicitly for an ISO delivery, not for an offline delivery. I note that there's a link to a torrent of the ISO in that issue. This is not something we can use in an enterprise environment for complance and security reasons.

Note2: this rant was created while waiting for vs2012.2.exe /layout to complete. I think it's got about 200 pixels left until it completes. I'm not sure how this relates to time or MB/GBs of download.

The recommend approach to using TFS (TFSVC) is to have a single Team Project which contains multiple projects organised by using areas for tasks / bugs and folders in source control. However the recommended approach to using Git is to use multiple small repositories with a project per repository and then using submodules to glue things together. It is not feasible to have multiple projects in a single git repository because the repository becomes too large and even though there is sparse checkout now it doesn't help with some cases such as needing multiple remotes for a module (needing local changes to a 3rd party library as an example.)

When using git with TFS I'd like to have the ability to have multiple git repositories in a single Team Project so that the recommended approach to using TFS and Git can be followed. Something like using gitslave would be good too.

Links:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/600079/is-there-any-way-to-clone-a-git-repositorys-sub-directory-only
http://blog.hinshelwood.com/one-team-project/
http://gitslave.sourceforge.net/

I write code in Visual Basic 2010.
What I'd like to suggest is to enable alias for namespace in Project -> 'Project name' Properties -> References (as in VB IDE), so that this alias would become global.
The thing is that if I have to use namespace alias, then I have to write this alias in every source code file. This would be very convenient if in Project Properties would be some text box which would allow setting an alias for particular namespace.
Namespace clashes occur when using namespace from Windows Forms and WPF. Also alias namespace is "must have" when using Excel or Word PIA, like "Imports Excel = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel".

Request:

It should be possible to define a namespace like this:

Namespace Global.MyCompany.MyLibrary

'my code

End Namespace

Meaning that the specified namespace (MyCompany.MyLibrary) is an absolute Namespace and should ignore the default namespace defined at project level.

Reason:

If I have a VB.NET - project with a default namespace, say "MyCompany.MyProduct" and 50 files representing classes, enums etc. and now there comes one new class that thematically belongs to another assembly (say "MyCompany.MyLibrary"), but because of cross-reference-restrictions I have to include in this assembly but with the namespace of the other one, then I have to remove the the default namespace from the project and add 50 times a

Namespace MyCompany.MyProduct
End Namespace

around all my existing code which is less-than-ideal, and also if I (or the marketing department) decides for a better name right before shipping, then I have to replace the namespace again 50 times...

It is obvious, from looking at the amount of unfixed bugs, and the woeful C++11 feature support, that the VC++ team is understaffed. For a company bragging about its "C++ renaissance", that's just absurd. For the sake of all your C++ customers, you really need to speed things up. I won't dictate *how* it should be done, but I can think of three obvious suggestions:

1: allocate more resources. Whoever is in charge clearly doesn't think C++ is important. Not when the VC++ team consistently refers to their "compiler guy" (singular), and we get comments like "I am the only one on the team working on the STL implementation". If Microsoft is serious about C++, put some money into it. Hire more people.

2: Open-source it. If the VC++ team can't keep up, perhaps the community can. If Microsoft isn't willing to give the VC++ team the resources needed to do its job properly, allow the community to step in.

3: stop reinventing the wheel. There are several good C++ compilers available already. License EDG's compiler, or use Clang, and put those few developer hours you have into patching it to work better with Windows. if you don't have the resources to maintain your own compiler, don't waste your time trying.

Again, I don't want to tell you *how* to solve the problem, just that the problem exists, and it is very noticeable to your customers.

I hate to bring forth blank statements like this but the Test Explorer in VS 2012 sucks. I waiting for the beta cycle to finish because I was under the impression serious improvements where in the works but now that I have the RC in my hands I'm very disapointed.

This is a major regression.

1) Believe it or not I can't even copy exception messages from the unit test results
2) I Can't run a test in context like I used to be able to (or i don't know how to)
3) I can't group tests by class name or any other way
4) I can't control the columns I'd like to see.

Either I'm completely missing something or you guys completely missed something. I hope its just me. For now I'd suggest you reintroduce the VS 2010 Test View as a solution.

I was chatting with a TS today about the details that go into making the IntelliTrace stand-alone collector really light up. We chatted a fair bit about symbols and their importance. I have been pushing the symbol and source index settings in TFS and then we got talking about keeping the symbols that match the deployment. What the TS hadn’t fully internalized was how build retention policies fit into that story to ensure that the symbols for the deployed builds can be managed. The last piece of the pie is resolving the symbols afterward as VS needs to know where to look.
Do you have a nice end to end that really gets into this entire story? Maybe a series of labs that really pull all of the pieces together?

Submitted by Visual Studio ALM Ranger