Windows 7 RTM Announced - 08.06.09

[RobDog888]

FPSE are not supported in 2008+. For the OS I havent heard yet

[JuggaloBrotha]

Ehm...I've several VS 2003 solutions in production so I have to install VS 2003. Once I fire up the installation, I get the well-known message:

"This machine is missing components required for local Web application and Web service development..."

and Front Page Server Extensions (FPSE) are missing. After some surprise of not being able to install them by turining windows features on and off (they're not included), I came across a few posts which indidate that FPSE are not supported for Win7 and they are no plans to support them on Win7.

Can anyone confirm this? If it's true, it's a problem that I can't work around.

Since I've read that VS 2003 doesn't work in Vista it's no surprise that it doesnt work in Win7 either. However, once it's out of beta you can use the XP VM that MS gives you (for Enterprise and Ultimate editions) for free, just run VS 2003 in the VM in Win7

[ntg]

Since I've read that VS 2003 doesn't work in Vista it's no surprise that it doesnt work in Win7 either.

You're right about VS.2003 and Vista, obviously I've skipped Vista completely.

However, once it's out of beta you can use the XP VM that MS gives you (for Enterprise and Ultimate editions) for free, just run VS 2003 in the VM in Win7.

One of my more Linux-minded colleagues has setup his work PC using Debian. Since we're a .Net shop, he's doing his real work inside a virtual machine, so he's ended up running the OS he should have booted up from virtually and has a (more or less) irrelevant OS as the virtual machine host. The whole scheme just wastes memory, disk space and processing cycles.

The fact that I can't use VS.2003 is a big disappointment to me. I won't seriously consider performing a non-trivial amount of my work under a VM.

[RobDog888]

Its just the FPSE that are not supported in Vista and 7. If you dont need it then you can still force an install of 2003 just without ASP.NET project support etc.

[ntg]

Unfortunately I need FSPE because I've a few web projects/services in VS.2003 as well. Granted, I could use a VM to host those or run VS.2003 but then I'd be forced to have a VM running all the time or make changes to the solutions and the build scripts to name just a few of the major inconveniences.

I'm a bit frustrated about this. I really like 7 and I was sure there wouldn't be any problems with my upgrade but I can't think a way around this.

Edit: As far as I can gather from this and other web posts, FSPE works on Vista - this is the real reason I was taken by surprise because, if nothing else, Microsoft is a sucker for compatibility. I can't think of a technical reason that would make it impossible to run FSPE under Win7 since they can run under Vista.

[JuggaloBrotha]

Well, you could start using VS 2008 Express editions for the projects since they're free to use and they work on Vista/Win7. The downside is... you'll have to upgrade the projects to VS 2008 and not use VS 2003. Plus side, with VS 2008 you can have them target the 2.0 Framework so the clients don't have to install .Net all the way up to v 3.5. Downside.. the contract, might be a problem.

[ntg]

Indeed it is a problem. I'm not vending here, it is a big problem.

According to StatSVN, I've a few hundred thousand LOCs worth of VS.2003 code which targets a vertical and highly specialized market, and also incorporates customer code (which has been compiled using VS.2003 as well).

The normal rules of routinely upgrading to the latest-and-greatest runtime version of .Net do not apply. For any system-wide change, even one as "trivial" as a recompile, we have to check for forward compatibility issues inhouse, we have to talk the customer into upgrading their own code that we use, allocate resources to do a straight-forward but time consuming system-wide QA test and deploy all the new redistributable packages.

These days, it's increasingly difficult for me to sell to the customers features that save production time from their people...to say nothing about persuading them to perform an upgrade to the .Net 2.0 runtime. The business value just isn't there.