July CTP - worth installing?
I'm doing production work on Beta 2 and really don't have any specific problems. I do see the occasional crash of visual studio, and there are warts on team system here and there that I know have been fixed since beta 2.
My question is - is it worth my effort to upgrade my environment to the July CTP? Doing so will require backing up all my code and documents, scraping the machines down to the bare metal and re-installing from scratch (I don't want to risk a beta uninstaller not quite working). Following the rebuild I can reload my source code and documents, but I'll lose all history.
So, does anyone (yet!) have enough experience with the July CTP to have an informed opinion as to whether it's worth the trouble to upgrade from Beta 2 for someone doing real development (as opposed to just tormenting the product!).
Any opinions/insights appreciated!
I'm content to stay with Beta 2 until RTM (or Beta 3 if there is one). But if there's a compelling reason to move to July CTP, I'd consider it.
For example, is the database schema going to remain stable from July CTP on, or will there be more changes? If the DB schema is stable, then presumably it'd be possible to migrate a project from July CTP to RTM without losing history. That would be a compelling reason to make the switch now.
If you're doing production work on Beta 2, you'll probably want to stay there since the Go Live license is not extended to CTP releases.
Internally, we're using July CTP as our current dogfood bits.
I concur with the other responses. I've successfully installed it and am using the CTP and am quite happy with it. But... I would not move to it unless there is a good reason. The migration process will probably be painful regardless of which version. If you're doing production work I propose you stay with B2 until the next beta, RTM or other 'supported' version comes out. Why migrate more than you have to?
The go-live license isn't really relevant though. The work being done is development of a WinForms application that won't be released until after (or concurrent with) RTM of VS 2005/.NET 2.0.
Based on the replies, it sounds like there's nothing compelling that's been implemented since Beta 2 (which makes me wonder what the dev team's been up to...)
Any other opinions?
Carl -
From where I sit, the Dev Team has been up to plenty. But a lot of it will only be interesting to people worried about the guts of the system - for example, Integration Partners writing tools targeting Team System. There are also numerous changes that will address specific issues that some people have run into. I'm digging into is as I prepare training material and support for my customers who are (or will be) using Team System and want to know what to expect as we move toward production. Most of what I've witnessed personally is renames in the code and XML to get rid of the code names (e.g., Currituck) and move them toward meaningful names (e.g., work items).
Enough of my rant. There are some of the July CTP changes posted by some notable bloggers: Rob Caron, Jeff Beehler and Buck Hodges.
