Don’t install Visual Studio 2010 RC just yet

By: Brian Lagunas Category:UncategorizedTag: Silverlight, silverlight 4 beta:

If you haven’t heard already, Microsoft announced that Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate was available for MSDN subscribers and would be probably available on 10 February 2010 for the public, which is today. But before you get all excited and start installing the latest and greatest as soon as possible, you might want to slow down and reconsider; at least if you are a Silverlight developer.

Here are my two reasons for waiting:

At this time, VS2010 RC does not support developing Silverlight 4 applications. This means that at this time there is no update for Silverlight 4 runtime/tools or the WCF RIA Services or other companion frameworks (toolkit controls, etc.). This will not be enabled until the next public build of Silverlight 4 and companion frameworks.
Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and Visual Studio RC does NOT install side-by-side. You must first uninstall VS Beta 2 then install VS2010 RC.

So, if you want to keep developing on Silverlight 4, stick with the VS Beta 2 for now. At least until the next public build Silverlight 4 is released.

9 thoughts on “Don’t install Visual Studio 2010 RC just yet”

Currently Silverlight 4 is not high on my list. Asp.Net MVC2 is on the top of the list.

@Chris Brandsma

I am just now learning Asp.Net MVC 2, and so far I am liking what I see, but runing into some issues. I might need to take you out to lunch for some consultation.

Lunch? We can make that happen.

I have found a few gotchas like that in VS 2010 RC, this is why I never uninstalled VS 2008 and just run them parallel.

@Ryan Eastabrook

I do agree with you, but don’t loose sight of the original post. In this case I am talking about VS 2010 Beta 2 and VS 2010 RC. You can only do Silverlight 4 development in VS 2010 Beta 2, not VS 2010 RC or VS 2008. Also, VS 2010 Beta 2 does NOT install parallel to VS 2010 RC. So if you want to continue Silverlight 4 development wait to install VS 2010 RC. I also do not uninstall VS 2008, both VS 2010 Beta 2 and VS 2010 RC install parallel to VS 2008.