Read more about it on Soma’s blog. You can easily get it through the Visual Studio Update in you VS 2012 IDE (Tools –> Extensions & Updates). You can also get TFS 2012 Update 1 (and other components) here.
I’ve been talking about Update 1 for a good while now and giving previews:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2012/10/29/visual-studio-2012-update-1-final-ctp.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2012/09/12/visual-studio-update-this-fall.aspx
So I won’t repeat the long list of what’s in it. Download it and check it out for yourself. There’s a ton of really nice additional capabilities, bug fixes, performance improvements, etc. For instance, we’ve taken all the issues we’ve hit in our own use of TFS 2012 since we released and rolled the fixes into Update 1.
Overall, the experience should be pretty good. Updating VS is pretty friction free. It’s a “patch” that just updates your install. Updating TFS is a little more involved. It’s actually a full new install (though it will silently uninstall the older version and install the update so it feels like a “patch”). However, we still have some work to do to make this as seamless as possible. If you’ve done any customization of your TFS install (enabling https, changing ports, etc) you will need to reapply those customizations after installing the update. We are doing work in Update 2 to detect and reapply many of the common customizations automatically. Another example, … If you have a build agent configured on your TFS server (literally running the same machine), you will need to reconfigure it after the update. It’s an easy run through the wizard but still something you have to do.
Just want to make sure you go into it with your eyes wide open.
I’ve been asked a couple of times lately about how this relates to VS/TFS SP1. Should I wait for SP1? As we are currently thinking about it, there will be no SP1. We have changed the model from a single Service Pack between major releases to a sequence of “Updates”. So you can, kind of, think of Update 1 as SP1. I suppose it’s possible that, at some point, we will decide to name one of the Updates as an “SP” but that won’t really change anything. We’re shipping VS 2012 updates. We’ll ship several between VS 2012 and VS V.Next.
We’ve already started planning for VS Update 2. The holidays are going to throw a bit of a wrinkle at us because they are less than a month away. We’ve decided not to try to get out the first preview of Update 2 before the holidays. Right now we’re thinking it will be late January but we’ll know more after the first of the year. In the mean time, there’s enough great new stuff in Update 1 that it should keep you busy for a while.
As always, we appreciate any feedback you have.
Thanks,
Brian