The Joel on Software Discussion Group (CLOSED)

If you're going to upgrade your VS2005, kick it off just before you leave at night.

My dev lead just finished upgrading, it took just over 2 hours to complete!!!!

Also make sure you have 2 GB+ in your C: partition.

And uninstall the web projects first, or you get to waste plenty of time.

And pray

It took about 1.5 hours for me last night.  The installer spends a whole lotta time looking like it is not doing anything.

I have often thought that VS (since 2002) was conceived as an example of why one might not want to use .NET in ones own applications.

VS2005-SP1 seems to be conceived as an example of why not to use MSI/MSP.

Utterly, utterly pathetic.

>>If you're going to upgrade your VS2005, kick it off just before you leave at night.

Unfortunately, you'll then have a 50-50 chance of coming back in the morning to find a "Do you really want to install this?" dialog box waiting for you.

At which point you accidentally hit Esc and it assumes "No"...

Took 45 minutes on my dev machine. Everything went smoothly and Visual Assist is working with it as well.

That must have run on my machine at work last night. Right when I went to shutdown and go home, XP gave the option to "Install updates and shutdown," and being the moron I am, I said yes. 8-) Update 7 of 9 took something like 20 minutes. I was a sucker that time.

>>If you're going to upgrade your VS2005, kick it off just before you leave at night.

Wait until you get through the pushing of the buttons "OK" and "I accept". After that you can leave.

Did SP1 solve the slow IDE problem?
Sometimes simple operations takes about one minute om my 2GB machine. Is VS2005 written in .NET itself? Is that the main reason for sluggish performance?

> After that you can leave.
Unless it decides sometime later to ask you to close down other applications (Outlook for one).

"Is VS2005 written in .NET itself? Is that the main reason for sluggish performance?"

Yes. Just restart the IDE once in a while so it can give its memory back to Windows. :-)

Just FYI:
Due to a compiler regression, SP1 breaks boost graph and Qt builds. Wait for a MS hotfix to upgrade.

https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=237089
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=896969&SiteID=1

"Is that the main reason for sluggish performance?"

IME poor performance is always caused by mediocre developers who are tolerant of poor performance.

Not the technology they're using.

When was Visual Studio rewritten in .NET?

As I understand VB6 code executes faster than .NET code as it is not interpreted. .NET is perfect for normal apps, but it is not suitable for systems programming as I see it, due to poor performance.

I can't picture VB6 as a develoment tool for a comercial-grade IDE either, but anything is possible.  There are other issues with .Net and performance, such as the layers navigated through to get to system APIs, garbage collected memory manegement, etc.

Delphi seems to have done this even for their Win32 product's IDE, and it hasn't made everyone happy.

Maybe this is a case of Microsoft dog-fooding? If so they must be choking on the high level of fillers and scarcity of meat.  .Net's no Alpo.

Another theory is that Microsoft figures if they can force developers onto higher spec machines where VS still performas at usable levels they'll ignore the cries of users about poor performance.  "Works ok on my machine."

To Regressions comments

Trolltech suggested workaround

http://www.trolltech.com/developer/knowledgebase/faq.2006-12-18.3281869860

"When was Visual Studio rewritten in .NET?"

It wasn't.  Most of VS2005 is still unmanaged C++ code.

"As I understand VB6 code executes faster than .NET code as it is not interpreted."

You're wrong.  .NET code isn't interpreted either (it's compiled at runtime like Java), and VB6 was never exactly known as a speed demon.  Optimized C/C++ is faster than .NET code but typically only by 10-20% or so.

The sluggishness of VS2005 is due to its architecture, not due to any bits of .NET code it might have.

...you know, at the risk of being considered trollish by the "truly enlightened", I just have to point out that MS has been working on .NET for what, how long now?  6+ years?  And even the IDE and the SP's have issues?

Is this really the best they can do?  I find this scary, to be honest.

I mean, looking at the mess that is IE7 (a *browser*, for crying out loud!) which is nowhere near as complex as .NET or VISTA (both of which rest on non-.NET code).  They couldn't even do a browser right!

Somebody buy MS a clue...?

(Sound of shark being jumped repeatedly...)

Q: What software does not have any issues? 

A: The ones used by those residing under a bridge.

I do admit SP1 is slow to install, it takes longer than installing VS2005!

There are ways to slipstream SP1 into your VS2005 CD, and if you ever plan on installing VS2005 somewhere, I insist on this.

On my work box it took exactly 30mins, the specs are
CPU: P4-3.4ghz Hyperthreaded
RAM: 3.5gb
HD: Seagate Barracuda SATA 7200prm /w 8mb cache

I can't believe some people are getting 2 hour install times, that's insane.  There has to be something wrong with your setup.  I did install SP1 on my home box which is only an AthlonXP 1700 (1.5ghz) but I wasn't around to time it :(

Oh, here's the article about how to slipstream (aka integrate) SP1 into your VS2005 install CD/DVD

http://wannabegeek.org/content/view/37027/107/

Run the downloaded .exe
At the first dialog DO NOT click anything.

Open your "\Local Settings\Temp" folder.
You will find a sub-dir called "VS80sp1-........"
Open that and MOVE "VS80sp1-KB926601-X86-ENU.msp" to another folder (on the same volume if you are sane)

Then open the run box and run

msiexec /q /update c:\update\VS80sp1-KB926601-X86-ENU.msp

Go home.

Took 40 mins with the above technique according to log file I generated.

I agree with Captain Clueless. VS2005 is really slow when loading up forms and especially when starting that Channels Bulletins and Updates startup dialog. And if you're creating database apps such as SQL Server Express and creating and managing the database within VS2005, then it gets really, really slow.

Speaking of VS2005, has anyone had the IDE lock up when certain files are loaded? I used to have that problem with the old Borland C++ IDE. But in this case, if I load comutil.h in VS2005 PRO, it locks up. If I load the same file in VS2005 Express Edition, everything is fine.

"The sluggishness of VS2005 is due to its architecture, not due to any bits of .NET code it might have."

I understand I was wrong about my .NET assumption.
What is the principle behind this new "architecture"?

It seems the sluggishness is spread all over VS 2005. It will not help to just make plain heart surgery. Every bone and muscle seems to be infected. The indication of a system sickness. Another indication: IntelliSense is affected by the graphics driver in Vista. See http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/posts/9711.aspx. CommonSense can't predict such behaviour.

What advice can be taken to survive until SP2? Which sub systems has to be turned off to save CPU cycles? How should my lines of code be organized to minimize the waiting time? One big file or hundreds of smaller files?

"What is the principle behind this new "architecture"?"

No principle at all, I think.  That's the problem. :)

As far as I know, the current Visual Studio is really built on Microsoft's experimental Java IDE.  That IDE got repurposed for .NET, the remaining VS pieces were added (C++, ASP, HTML/XML editing, deployment projects, VB scripting...), and the result was the half-baked VS.NET 2002.

That version really didn't do anything well except C# and VB.NET.  Since then every update has fixed some part or another: 2003 had a big C++ compiler upgrade, 2005 added refactoring and fixed the XML/HTML editor, and 2005 SP1 now fixes the C++ IDE.

When you consider the range of technologies that are supported by VS2005 it's a miracle the whole thing works at all.  It's a veritable Frankenstein IDE, and I'm not surprised that it needs a lot of horsepower to run.

VS 2005 bombs out on me all the time, but the worst thing is that somtimes it  won't really compile the current code unless I Re-Build.  If I just goto run then somtimes (randomly 1 in 20 times) it won't compile the current code...

this was really frustrating at first.  I would change somthing and couldn't understand why it wasn't working.

I would do a re-build before every run except that Re-Build almost always kicks me out.
I have to Clean/Build...:(