Microsoft released Visual Studio 2012 Update 3 CTP 1 within 10 days

It’s just 10 days when Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 RTM was released and now again, Microsoft released their next update pack named “Update 3”. This release is currently available under CTP (Community Technology Preview) first release.

Find herewith more about this release i.e. list of changes and the link to download it. Keep in mind that, it’s a CTP release and not ready for production environment yet.

Download Details

15th April 2013 is the another day when Microsoft released their first CTP version of the Update 3 pack of Visual Studio 2012. This includes few improvements in Agile planning and a lot of bug fixes. The update is available as an web installer and hence you must have to download that installer to begin with the process. If you want am offline/standalone installer of it to install the same in multiple devices or a future installation with out internet collection, you can create the offline installer very easily. Before that, download the web installer from the above link.

• Download Visual Studio 2012 Update 3 CTP 1 (1.3 MB)
• Download TFS Server 2012 Update 3 CTP 1 (1.1 GB)
• Download TFS Express 2012 Update 3 CTP 1 (483 .0 MB)

Once you have downloaded the web installer, open your Console (cmd.exe) in administrator mode (recommended) and navigate to the path where you downloaded the said installer. Now in the console window, enter the following command “VS2012.3.CTP.exe /layout” and follow the steps to download the whole package from Internet to your local drive for an offline installation.

New Improvements and Bug Fixes

This release incorporates few improvements and a lot of bug fixes. As per Microsoft Knowledge Base, here are the changes available in this release, but before downloading and installing it in your development environment make sure to read the Support Statements available at the end of this post:

Agile planning

Team Foundation Server
• Build settings can be preserved when you upgrade a TFS 2012 instance.
• Improvements in the New Build Definition UI for the Continuous Integration (CI) build in Git-based team projects.

Debugger

• 751327: Slow performance when you debug the managed code in a mixed-mode C++ application

Visual Studio IDE

• When you click a build error or build warning in a BizTalk project, the IDE cannot locate the artifact that causes the build error or build warning.

C++

• When you call the EndDialog function from inside the OnInitDialog function in an MFC application, the OnInitDialog function is invoked again.

Team Foundation Server

Administration and Operations
• The Application-Tier Only wizard does not preserve the Kerberos authentication type setting when you upgrade to a TFS 2012 instance that includes multiple application tiers.
• The Reporting tab displays an incorrect reporting services instance name in the TFS 2012 upgrade wizard.
• Incorrect Microsoft SharePoint URLs are displayed in the TFS 2012 upgrade wizard.
• The TFS 2012 upgrade wizard displays an incorrect reporting services instance name and incorrect reporting URL information when you reconfigure an application-tier server if the reporting URL information was changed.
• The TFS 2012 upgrade operation fails under the full recovery model when instances use the database mirroring feature.
• Assume that you configure a TFS 2012 instance with an instance of SQL Server that enables the AlwaysOn feature. You schedule a differential backup or a transaction log backup, or both. In this situation, all backup jobs perform a full backup.
• The event log does not include stack traces when the administrator console crashes.
• Assume that you create a team project by using a custom process template that includes two states that are mapped to the same state type. You create a user story for each state, and then you view the Kanban board in Product Backlog. In this situation, an error occurs. After you install the update, a validation message is displayed, and it indicates that the configuration is not valid.
• When you install TFS 2012 by using a non-English language package in the web installer, you notice un-localized (English) strings in the administrator console and in the Team Project Collections dialog box.
• You cannot create a new work item from an iteration backlog when there are multiple work item types in the task category.
• An error message incorrectly displays the MSSQL Server account instead of the Job Agent account when you configure scheduled backups.
• The review page displays the default port number instead of the configured port number when you configure Team Build without a saved settings file.
• You cannot configure TFS proxy on a computer that belongs to a separate domain from a TFS 2012 server.

Build Automation
• Assume that you use a user account to queue a build. The user account does not have a unique display name. In this situation, the user cannot be automatically assigned a work item if the build fails.

Web Access
• Slow performance when you open a work item that has many customized fields in TFS Web Access.

Web Tools

• Visual Studio 2012 may crash when you develop a web project.

Statement from Support Team

This Technology Preview has not been subject to final validation and is not meant to be run on production workstations or servers. Due to a limitation in this preview, Internet access is required during installation, even when installing with the /layout option. Please ensure Internet access is available before installing this update. Since installation of Visual Studio CTPs and installation of Team Foundation Server CTPs work differently, please read the recommended upgrade approach for each product carefully.

For Visual Studio: The recommended approach for upgrading Visual Studio on test workstations is installing the latest Visual Studio Update CTP on top of an RTM release or a previous CTP build of that Update. Visual Studio CTPs can be upgraded to a different build.

For Team Foundation Server: Do not install a Team Foundation Server Update CTP on a production server, as it will put the server in an unsupported state. Unlike with Visual Studio CTPs, installing a Team Foundation Server CTP fully replaces the current release on the server with the CTP. Team Foundation Server CTPs cannot be upgraded to future CTPs or releases nor “downgraded” to a previous release.