Last month, we shipped Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 (VS2012.2). We’re continuing to see good uptake of the Update releases, with the majority of Visual Studio 2012 users now running on VS Update. We’re also hearing positive feedback on the VS Update cadence, and the ongoing improvements that it brings to Visual Studio customers.
Many customers have been installing Visual Studio Updates from the “toast” pop-up notification or from the Extensions and Updates dialog. This continues to be the simplest option. The installer downloads only the components you need (based on your current VS installed configuration), and then installs the bits as they’re received. This approach often provides a very good experience, but it does require being connected to the internet for the duration of the install. Because a connection isn’t always available, the installer also supports a /layout flag, which enables all of the bits to be downloaded proactively, enabling subsequent offline installation. For more details on using this option, please see “How to install Visual Studio Update 2 Offline”, as referenced in the Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 KB.
In tracking the release feedback, we’ve also observed a set of users requesting an ISO image as an alternative way to download the update. The primary reasons we’ve seen for such requests are familiarity both with the format and with various download management tools. While our download telemetry shows a higher historical success rate for downloads occurring via the Visual Studio installer versus single, large ISO files, we recognize that the convenience of the ISO format may better meet some customers’ overall deployment needs. We are therefore happy to announce that we have built an ISO image for Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 and made it available for download!
We also plan to ship ISO images for the RTM version of future Visual Studio updates, in addition to the existing distribution mechanism we already provide. We hope you will enjoy this additional option for downloading Visual Studio Updates.
| Eric Knox – Development Manager, Visual Studio Short Bio: Eric has been at Microsoft for 19 years, working on various parts of Visual Studio for the last 15 years. His current role is the development manager in charge of performance, reliability and acquisition of Visual Studio. |
