The ORM Foundation

What are your plans for installing NORMA into VS 2010 (a.k.a. 'Dev10')?

Other than the usual and unpredictable amount of work testing and building workarounds, about how much effort has it taken in the past to adapt the installer to new versions of Visual Studio?

tnx - Jim

I'm curious about this as well, many months later... :)

Sorry for the late response. We have been very busy with adding extra capabilities to NORMA. We plan to add support for VS2010 by the time it is officially released (around March). I'll leave it to Matt Curland to discuss how much work this involves, as he will be the one doing it. Kind regards Terry

Hi all, 

I've just started the process of analyzing the NORMA-to-VS2010 port, which means I have the 2010 product and SDK installed and have begun analyzing the changes. It looks like the existing build process for compiling the VS2005/VS008 products using the same project files will continue to hold with minimal changes for VS2010, so that part of the port should be straight forward. However, there are significantly more changes between the DSL code generators (and possibly the runtime, more investigation is required) for 08/10 than there were for 05/08. This means that I might have to conditionally or alternately compile the DSL-generated pieces, which might take a while (I need to consider code generated by ~25 .dsl model files in numerous projects). A 'breaking changes document' referenced in the dsl readme is nowhere to be found, so I'm sleuthing on my own.

It will take me at least another day of work to get the initial automated build environment and custom build tools in place for 2010, analyze the dsl and visual studio SDK changes, and attempt an initial compile/port of the main project. I honestly won't have any idea until that point what I'm up against. If there are no major issues, then I'm looking at 2 or 3 days total to put new project file wrappers/build processes/setup files/etc in place. If things go really haywire then it could be two weeks of work, which I can't do immediately.

If this isn't done by the end of the month, then I'll at least be able to provide a more accurate estimate of when the work will be completed. Definitely by the time VS2010 ships.

So, please be patient, I'm working on it, and it will be done between now and the VS2010 ship date.

-Matt

Thanks very much folks!

I'm pretty new to the whole ORM thing, but I'm enjoying my crash course very much. ;)

Matt, if you get to the point where you need a guinea pig beta tester, please let me know. I've got VS2010 Ultimate RC installed.

John,

Thanks for the offer, I'll take you up on it when the time comes.

I did some investigations on the VS2010 changes about a month ago, but have been totally engaged in join paths and verbalization issues since then (there are a lot of things going on behind the scenes that haven't been posted yet).

The code looks like it will port reasonably well, but the Visual Studio package registration system has gone through considerable changes (NORMA is a VS package), so getting the tool to register correctly looks to be the main stumbling block. The mid-April VS2010 release is starting to loom large, so I have my work cut out for me.

-Matt

So I did a rather silly thing yesterday... I installed VS2010 and deleted '08, then discovered that NORMA isn't working for '10 yet! Oops... Kind of a rookie mistake for someone who's teaching the class this quarter! Matt, I know you're working hard on it. Is there a beta yet for a poor soul who doesn't want to reinstall '08? And how's the garden surviving with this cold snap? -- Tyler

Hi Tyler,

I hate to be the bearer of bad news on this, especially since I've said repeatedly that I'd get it out when VS2010 shipped, but I haven't been able to take the week I estimate I'll need to make the VS2010 port. It is also highly unlikely I'll be able to do it in May. The end of June is more likely. Obviously, that doesn't help your quarter any, but I need to prioritize NORMA work for those who are enabling me to feed my family, which means extending static derivation rule support to full relational completeness and adding dynamic extensions before I can take a week on VS2010.

-Matt

PS The garden is fine, and the tree's didn't even thinking about budding out when it warmed up in March and April, so I knew it was a temporary thaw. I need to rebuild the tractor carburetor, though, so it stays on reliably. That won't take nearly as long as the formal derivation extensions, though.

Thanks, Matt!

I certainly understand how you need money to feed the family, at least until the first crop starts coming in. ;-) In the meantime I'll do like Jeremy does and just run it from a virtual machine. Thank you for the rapid response, and for all the hard work you continue to put in to NORMA.

-- Tyler

p.s. Lucky!! Our peach and almond were in full bloom just in time for the last frost. Stupid trees.

So, Hows the new plug-in coming? I am very interested in getting it as well.

My guess is the DSL model tools made some significant changes that are breaking the code generation. Either that, or there's been a gopher infestation in the back yard. I might not be up to speed on the project any more, but I'm pretty handy with a .22! Let me know if there's anything I can do to help out.

 I'm also anxiously awaiting a release which we can use in VS 2010. I have no idea what degree of effort is involved in making the move, but I would be willing to contribute to the project in that way if it weren't an insurmountable challenge.

I've heard that many people are holding off on VS2010 because of the high price.

So could you summarise what you see as the benefits of migrating from VS2008 to VS2010?

a) for a NORMA user

b) for a general VS user?

Thanks

Ken

An existing NORMA user such as myself would benefit from having ORM documents correctly contained within my solutions, this becomes even more of an issue when source control is primarily managed via the IDE. As it is, I can manage by working on ORM in 2008 and the rest of my solution is 2010, but for obvious reasons this is not ideal.

 

As for a general VS user, I'm not certain what I would consider the most compelling reason, it really depends on your role as a visual studio user.