Using the December Windows Azure Platform Training Kit with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2

You may have downloaded the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit, and if not, you should check it out.

The kit installs a bunch of material and then opens your web browser to a nice UI interface where you can start learning all about the platform:

One of the first things you may notice when you go to check out one of the many labs,
is that the kit seems to require Visual Studio 2008 as a dependency.
Now your mileage may vary here, as I have Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 installed,
and still would like to partake of the goodies.

So, when you go to run the setupLab.cmd file from the Visual Studio Command Prompt,
the wizard will run it’s dependency checker and you will get a screen like this:

EEK.    Well, I know I have Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 (I have 168 days left..) and well,
I certainly have the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio installed to boot.

Luckily, the setupLab.cmd file simply calls some tasks via PowerShell, and the DPE guys were kind enough to leave us an "out”.

(Thanks Ryan, David and all the rest of you Microsoft DPE folks!)

In the lab files .\Source\Setup folder, you will find next to your setupLab.cmd file a dependency.xml file,
so you simply need to crack that puppy open, and change the optional=”false” to “true” for both the
CheckVS2008.ps1 and CheckAzureTools.ps1 tasks, as highlighted below:

Now I can re-run the setupLab.cmd file, and the wizard will show optional, and allow me to continue the install.

Now, your particular mileage may vary here, but it seems to work for me,
and now I can get on to checking out some of the new AppFabric and Identity labs.

Have fun!