Wahoo! Cool stuff. I checked out one of there weekly builds from codeplex last week and if you are not convinced that Avalon[1] is going to seriously kick WinForms butt then you need to see this demo. I'll post more on that another day, first I have to bitch.
So, a new release of SCSF 2007, this is great. Our next gen product is built on SCSF Dec 06 so I am eager to upgrade. Hmmm, hold on. I have to uninstall the Dec06 version. What is going to happen to my existing projects? I'd better go read the installation instructions. Nope, nothing in there about what the upgrade will do to my existing projects. Anyway, while I 'm puzzling over this risk I'll go and download the dependencies. GAX Feb 2007 CTP, GAT Feb 2007 CTP, VS Extensions for Indigo and Avalon. Shame the installation instructions don't contain the links. Anyhoo
Hold on. Isn't this supposed to be a SCSF go live version? But it has dependencies on CTPs. Surely there is some mistake.
Maybe I'll head over to the SCSF site on codeplex, maybe I can find some guidance[2] there. So I check out the releases. Hey, the latest release is SCSF Drop 11 Beta. Is this the same version that Blaine is talking about? Nope, I guess not the version on MSDN was published on the 18th, a week later than the one on Codeplex. Oh, wow, they must have really done some work, last week they were talking about "You may want to limit running the MSIs to a Virtual PC, just to be safe", this week were are live!
Maybe I should check out the discussions. Ewww, maybe not, the last post is from someone who is really stuck in installation hell. I thought .Net was supposed to help with these problems.
Anyway, so where can I find these VS extensions for Avalon/Indigo. I guess the Visual Studio Developer center would be a good place to start. Ha! If you want an exercise in frustration, go try and find any of the VS Extensions from there. Dream on. Fortunately, google came to the rescue and I found the Avalon/Indigo extension. Guess what, another CTP.
Ok, so there is no way that I am going to try this on my main dev box. So I guess I have to duplicate my dev environment on a VPC so that I can do a test uninstall of SCSF Dec 06 and install SCSF May 07. The question is how long will it be before all the CTP dependencies are removed. From what I can tell the Avalon extensions are not scheduled for release until VS.Orcas!
Sorry Blaine, I'm not going to be able to give you feedback for a while I have a VPC to build.
[1] If Silverlight gets to have a cool name, I'm going back to indigo and Avalon.
[2] Ironic isn't it that I'm looking for guidance on installing a package to provide guidance.