OT: Visual Studio 2005 Stability

djjlewis posted on Friday, October 27, 2006

I just wanted to get thoughts or opinions on the stability (or lack thereof!) of Visual Studio 2005.

I have been using VS 2005 in anger for a number of weeks now and generally experience crashes or hangs several times a day.

I wondered at first whether it was just me particular esoteric environment: I'm running it in a VMWare image with a side-by-side install of VS 2003 developing CSLA 2.0 in ASP.NET 2.0 with the new Web Application Projects model. I also wondered if it had anything to do with the ClsaDataSource control, as I have seen much discussion about the great lengths Rocky has gone to make this work in a useful manner.

To see if it was just me I did a search on Google for Visual Studio 2005 Bugs - and with nearly 6 million hits, I'm guessing I'm not alone!

As a last resort I signed up for the SP1 beta program (where Web Application Projects are now included as standard), and installed it on my production machine (something I very rarely do). It does appear to have alleviated some of the errors, but is still crashing a lot more than I'd like.

Has anyone else here had similar experiences?

Regards,

Dan.

ajj3085 replied on Friday, October 27, 2006

Well, I can almost guess what others will say, so I want to throw my experience in..

VS2005 has been very stable for me, much more stable than 2003.  I have had a few hangs, but mainly it get weir problems, like the form designer complaining it can't find the latest assembly (which it can) where I have to close and restart VS.  But on the whole, its been very good.  I have used VS2005 on three different machines.

HTH
Andy

Henrik replied on Friday, October 27, 2006

Dan

I also struggled in anger with VS 2005 crashes. Sometimes it crashed just by adding a new code line and it was driving me crazy.

My problems was caused by a bug in the VB.NET compiler (&H8013141) which MS has acknowledged and is described in the following knowledge base article: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;915038

They have not made the patch publicly available, but instead you can sign up for the VS 2005 SP1 Beta program. You'll need to be accepted into the program, but I think they accept almost anyone.

After installing SP1 Beta the problem has gone away.

Hope this helps

/Henrik

ChristianPena replied on Friday, October 27, 2006

I did notice that C# Express is more stable than Visual Studio 2005. I couldn't quantify it for you, but that is the impression that I had after spending some time with each.

The C++ functionality has it's share of quirks. Sometimes the Class Wizard does not appear when you choose a Generic C++ class. The class that is generated has two "public:" sections, one for the constructor and one for the destructor. That may be by design, but it's just an annoyance for me.

With that said, I haven't had any issues thus far when working with VB.NET in VS 2005 at work.

Brian Criswell replied on Friday, October 27, 2006

About the only real problem I have come across is when you delete an object but do not delete corresponding object data sources.  It locks out the data source window until you edit the project file and remove it.

ajj3085 replied on Friday, October 27, 2006

ChristianPena:

I did notice that C# Express is more stable than Visual Studio 2005.

Well that would be expected I'd think, since Express is lacking a good many features of Studio. 

Bayu replied on Friday, October 27, 2006

All my trouble ended when I disabled 'Edit and Continue'.....

ajj3085 replied on Friday, October 27, 2006

I never have that enabled (and I'm a C#er)... I've heard its been the cause of much heartache though..  but that could explain my stability.

JoeFallon1 replied on Friday, October 27, 2006

Overall it has been barely acceptable. I haven't had too many hangs - a couple of times it phoned home with a crash about the VB compiler. It is significantly slower than VS2003.

I signed up for the Hot Fix (before the SP1 Beta) and it helped quite a bit. The speed doubled for a full compilation. Now it is like VS2003 in terms of speed.

Hope SP1 comes out soon.

Joe

 

pelinville replied on Friday, October 27, 2006

2005 was a big step backwards for stability.

Disabling edit and continue did help but... I am once again adicted to it. It just helps so much in the learning process.

I still have a few projects in 2003.  It never crashes. I leave the project open for days and replace and re-referance dlls constantly and it never crashes.

But even with the restarting necessary in 2005 I am still more productive in it.

If SP1 fixes the major problems....!!!!!

djjlewis replied on Saturday, October 28, 2006

Thanks for everyone's comments.

I would have to concur that VS 2003 was a lot more stable in my experience. I did end up calling Microsoft to get the VB compiler hotfix, but it only alleviated the problem rather than cure it completely, which is why I ended up trying the SP1 beta.

I wonder if the crashing is just related to VB which is why some people (the C#ers perhaps)  have not had as many problems?

There are a few other little things that are annoying including the dynamic toolbars not showing the code/design icons when clicking on .aspx files, and the debug icon sometimes stays disabled after running.

Although the experience is frustrating compared to VS 2003 I would agree that the functional benefits of the IDE and laguage will make me stick with it and hopefully the problems will be sorted in the longer term. Either that or I'll have to switch to the dark side - (C# that is, not Java!)

Regards,

Dan.

ajj3085 replied on Monday, October 30, 2006

Its likely its the Edit and Continue that VB people seem to like.. which makes sense.  Changing a program while running will cause unexpected results.

If you choose C# for your default settings, its turned off by default I believe.  Rarely is it a big deal to close the app and restart it to test changes.

FWIW, compiling seems pretty quick... but I have a dual core workstation w/ 1gb ram too..