Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 Service Pack 1 is now available for Visual Studio Developers
Microsoft has announced Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio Developers.
The Service Pack 1 adds power to Visual Studio .Net 2003 especially during the debug and build processes. Memory consumption that occurs during debug and build processes has been well optimized. If your solution is big and containing many projects even opening a page in desing mode sometimes takes time for the developer. Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio .Net 2003 seems to correct such problems. Even sometimes during a build process the Visual Studio .Net 2003 IDE stops responding and then the process fails and the IDE (Integrated Development Environment) closes without a notification. This bug or problem is corrected with the SP1 for VS.NET 2003.
I have been using and testing the SP1 for a while and I'm very glad that the service pack is available for us. The main solution on which I'm working on consists of about a number of 10 to 15 projects that are located on MS Visual SourceSafe serving for a group of developers. And after the first debug process a second debug process was not possible though I'm developing on a computer which has 2 GB RAM. So it was pain to debug the application. Also in some cases saving a file after a few small changes takes time that you can not bare. All such problems has gone now with the installation of the VS.NET 2003 SP1.
You can download the VS.NET 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=69d2219f-ce82-46a5-8aec-072bd4bb955e&DisplayLang=en
The name of the executable file is VS7.1sp1-KB918007-X86.exe and has a size of 156 MB. The download pack also includes the Release Notes in 10 different languages. After you execute the installation file, it takes some time to start the installation process. For a long period of time I think it gathers data about the current installation. This situation is also issued among the known issues on the release notes of the SP1 with the statement "Visual Studio .NET 2003 Service Pack 1 installer doesn't provide progress feedback for a long time". After the install begins you may be asked to insert the VS.NET 2003 CD's or DVD. After the installation of the Service Pack 1 is completed you are asked to reboot your system in order to take effects of the changes.
In my configuration, I was working both on VS.NET 2003 and VS 2005. So both development programs were installed on my computer. After the installation of SP1 of the VS.NET 2003, no minus effect occured on the Visual Studio 2005 Development Environment. But if you are working with Smartphone 2003 SDK in Turkish or Java Language Converter Assistant (JLCA) 3.0 you should better read the release notes before installing the Service Pack 1 for the Visual Studio.Net 2003.
With the Service Pack 1 VS.NET 2003 has gained a new feature and enhancement for .Net developers, the Browse without Build feature. This feature is available where inline code model is used for .Net coding. The browser window within the VS.NET 2003 IDE will compile and serve the inline codes. You can find more detailed explanation about this new feature at http://support.microsoft.com/?id=829119
As a last note for a full list of fixed bugs with the release of Visual Studio .NET 2003 Service Pack 1, you can browse the page at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;918007