Visual Studio 2008 SP1 - First Looks

By CSharpner · August 14, 2008

I downloaded and installed Visual Studio 2008 SP1 on Tuesday, 2008-08-12.

If you want to download it, you can get it here (this will download a very small EXE, which will then download the rest during install):
  • Small SP1 EXE
  • http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=fbee1648-7106-44a7-9649-6d9f6d58056e&DisplayLang=en
If you want the ISO, get it here:
  • VS2K8 SP1 ISO
  • http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/info.aspx?na=47&p=3&SrcDisplayLang=en&SrcCategoryId=&SrcFamilyId=fbee1648-7106-44a7-9649-6d9f6d58056e&u=details.aspx%3ffamilyid%3d27673C47-B3B5-4C67-BD99-84E525B5CE61%26displaylang%3den
If you don't want to burn the ISO, you can mount it as a virtual drive. If you have VMWare, you can mount an ISO so that the VM sees the ISO as an actual CD/DVD. If you want to install it on your host, you can share the virtual disc from within your VM and share it on the network, then access it over the virtual network from your host (works great). Of course, this is using a sledge hammer to swat a fly, so I wouldn't recommend this unless you already have VMWare. But if you DON'T have VMWare, you should get it (not just for the ISO mounting support, of course).

If you'd prefer to not go the VMWare route (or if you don't have VMWare), here's a list of ISO mounting drivers:

OK, so these are my first impressions of VS2K8 SP1:

  • It takes waaaaaaaaaaaay too long to install (2-3 hours or so on a 2.4Ghz Dual Core PC w/ 7GB RAM and Windows XP 64bit).
    • I don't know if it was slow in downloading while installing or if the install was just slow, but I recommend downloading the ISO and mounting that to install from it (or if you have an MSDN sub, just wait for the DVDs to arrive in the mail and install from there).
  • I didn't have any problems installing (other than the really slow install time). Everything works.
  • Compiles now take about 20-30 seconds LONGER!!! (correction 2008-08-27: It takes 40 seconds longer!!! It just sits there, doing nothing for 40 seconds.)
    • This is VERY frustrating! Most people don't realize this, but this is actually a game changer! Making a quick change, then running to test, then going back and doing another quick nudge, then run, is no longer a viable possibility since it takes so freaking long to wait on the compiler. I now need to spend more time batching up changes. This is going to seriously impact some parts of my development. Back when I was programming in Delphi, it was always super fast. Compiling was almost instantaneous. When I had to use a much slower compiler at work, the people there who hadn't experienced such fast compiling couldn't understand what it was they were missing, as I suspect many readers here will not realize what a difference quick compiling makes in your development efforts... and I know that Microsoft doesn't.
  • Stepping through code gives you the option of NOT stepping into getter and setter methods on properties.
    • This is a HUGE help! Since I use properties a LOT, stepping through code is a major pain when calling a method that takes several parameters, and each one is a property that I'm passing in... I used to be forced into each and every freaking property getter. Now, I just get sent straight into the method I'm calling.

So, that's all I've seen so far. The MUCH slower compiling is a huge disappointment, but possibly the newly added benefit of skipping over property getters and setters might offset the extra wasted time. Time will tell.