Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and Team Foundation Server SP1

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Yesterday we released Visual Studio 2008 SP1 (bootstrapper or ISO) and Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1 (self-extractor). There is also a download available for just the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (bootstrapper and self-extracting package). These are also available from the Subscriber Downloads area of MSDN for MSDN subscribers.

If you want to see what’s new in Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 have a look at this article on MSDN.

These are the main features of Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1:

  • Support for Windows Server 2008.
  • Support for SQL Server 2008.
  • The Add to Source Control dialogs have been improved to be easier to use and more scalable.
  • Drag & Drop from Windows Explorer to add to Source Control.
  • Support for Version control operations on files not in bound solutions.
  • Right-click access to set Working Folder/Cloak of folders from within Source Control Explorer.
  • Check in date/time column in Source Control Explorer.
  • Editable path field for the Source Control Explorer.
  • Email work items and queries to someone.
  • A new API to download files to a stream.
  • Links to Team System Web Access pages from notifications.
  • Improvements to the number of projects per server.
  • Performance and scale improvements.
  • Improvements to the VSS converter to make it much more robust.
  • Support for creating Team Projects from the command line.

I decided to install Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1 from scratch on one of my servers, so I could install it on Windows Server 2008 and the RTM version of SQL Server 2008. Patching an existing server is just a matter of running the TFS 2008 SP1 package, after backing up your database first just in case, but starting from scratch requires a few extra steps. You can find the exact process in the updated Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1 Installation document here (note the instructions on the download page about how to open downloaded CHM files for display). In a nutshell, you need to create an installation source of TFS 2008 that has SP1 merged. The installation document explains how. Once you have created the merged installation source, everything else proceeds as before.

Also note that if you are installing TFS 2008 on a server that already has Visual Studio 2008 installed, you need to apply Visual Studio 2008 SP1 first.

Update: Oh, and if you’re working with Silverlight 2 Beta 2, it has been updated so the tools now work with the RTM version of VS 2008 SP1. Download the updated version here.