 |
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
|
As you know, I spent a lot of time working with LINQ, the Entity Framework, and LINQ to Entities. I've also recently done some thinking in terms of comparing the Entity Framework and Apple's Core Data (I will probably post something about that in an upcoming blog entry).
Anyway, it looks as though this version of the CTP finally includes LINQ, LINQ to Entities, the Entity Framework, and the language extensions for supporting all of that stuff. Previously, we had to have the May CTP of LINQ, and the September CTP of ADO.NET vNext "Orcas", both installed on top of .NET Framework 2.0 in order to get anything to work.
Since then, Microsoft has been pumping out this colossal, titanically huge VPC images. While I'm all for testing your beta stuff in a VPC (its far less damaging to the host OS, especially one as brittle and unforgiving to beta software as Vista), but, I mean really - do we all have the time and resources to download 5-6 GIGS worth of VPC images?? Am I the only one concerned with the fact that this CTP is so configuration-bound that it cannot be deployed using an installation program? It has to be patched and bandaided and hacked up in a lab and then distributed as a VPC image.
Maybe I'm expecting too much (things like useful CTPs instead of stuff we can't run). In any case, if I find the time to actually mess with this CTP, I will post my thoughts here. In the meantime, while this monstrosity of a VPC is downloading, I'll be off playing with Core Data, Core Animation, and Objective-C 2.0 :)
-- Update: I take some of it back. There also appears to be a self-extracting installation image - I'm pretty sure this is the first time the Orcas CTP has had one of those, so things could be looking up. Regardless, I think I'll still be using the VPC image since I don't have tons of spare hardware lying around, nor do I have a machine that I can risk ruining a Visual Studio installation for :)
Previous Orcas releases let you do the self-extracting image thing.
Well, they claimed to, but to date I have yet to actually get one of the
previous ones to work.
