"VS 2008 SP1 Doesn't Patch VS Express"

A customer noted yesterday that the patch for "big VS" (that is, Visual Studio 2008 Standard, Professional, and Visual Studio Team Suite) doesn't patch Visual Studio Express. We did this because of the patch size: in the past Express customers would download one of the Express products (probably 50-60MB) and then have to apply the full VS patch (typically over 200MB). So we decided that we would do what we call a "major release" of Express 2008 with SP1. Effectively, rather than creating a separate service pack, we added the features of the service pack to the full Express SKU -- we used to call this "slipstreaming" but I've been told that's not quite the right term. Most Express users will just download the Express SKU of their choice: if they already have a VS Express 2008 RTM SKU on their computer, we'll upgrade it. If they don't, they get the full SKU without having to install a separate service pack.

Technorati Tags: Visual Studio Express,Service Pack