Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2003 beta 1
Last Friday beta 1 of SP1 for Visual Studio 2003 was released. Since I already had many problems with VS stability and performance, I installed it right away on my production machine. Here are the results from 4 days of exhaustive testing, stretching VS to it's limits:
- "Only one web service binding attribute is specified at a time" fix is included
On original VS 2003 this error occurred periodically (several times per day) when a project containing a web reference was build. The workaround was to rebuild the project instead of build, but this caused the build time to increase significantly as the rebuild action was being executed on all depended projects. Now, there is really no need for rebuild.
- Improved build time
The build command on a solution correctly checks contained projects for changes without wasting time. Without the service pack VS needs 2 secs on average to check a project, even if the projects was not changed at all since the last build. Now, for a build on a solution with 40, all unchanged, projects, lasts about 2 secs in total.
- Memory leak bug found
With VS not crashing at all, I discovered a memory leak on rebuild process. The bug exists on unpatched VS too, but it's just harder to notice if it crashes 1-2 times per day. I've already reported this bug and it's forwarded to development team.
- Overall performance and stability
Microsoft has done a great job with this service pack. Visual Studio is now extremely stable and reliable, I had not a single crash in 4 days work, while previously it crashed 1-2 times per day. The first two fixes that I mention dropped the daily build time dramatically and improved significantly my productivity.
Beware that this beta cannot be uninstalled or upgraded to the final sp release. If you install it now, you’ll have to completely uninstall VS and reinstall it. You can apply for participation for the beta program at Microsoft Connect.
Update, 2006-04-06: Microsoft confirmed my bug, but it got the status "won't fix". Wont' fix means:
"We know that we will not be addressing the reported issue, usually because it risks breaking the code in other, more serious ways or because the effort to fix the issue is not justified for the improvement."
You can view the details of this bug on: https://connect.microsoft.com/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?SiteID=141&FeedbackID=59952 (You'll need to login first)