Servicing plans for VS 2003 and VS 2005

Today has been a big day, with the official launch of Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006.

We've seen some questions today in blogs and forums about our servicing plans for VS 2003 and VS 2005, and I thought it would be a good idea to communicate them here.  We use "hot fixes" to address time-critical issues, and periodically release service packs that have multiple fixes.  By having the combination of these methods, we hope to provide timely fixes for critical issues and also make it easy for customers to deploy fixes broadly.

We have plans for two service pack releases for the first part of 2006:

  • VS 2003 SP1 is scheduled for April 2006.  We have done much of the work for this release already, and are anxious to get it to you.
  • VS 2005 SP1 is scheduled for the first half of 2006.  We will be more specific about the date in a few months, once we have more customer data.

--Scott