CS2008: A first look at the CS2008.5 SDK
From a user POV, CS2008.5 is just a bunch of bug fixes with the addition of a new application type, Wikis. But, this is a major step for developers. Here is a cursory list of the changes:
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The SDK has been converted to Visual Studio 2008, but it appears that Telligent has not installed the latest service pack as the project files now store the Visual Studio build number.
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The projects all target the 2.0 .NET Framework, but they are also using some of the compiler changes that were made available with the release of the 3.5 .NET Framework.
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This means that it will not compile under Visual Studio 2005.
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Some small, but rather significant, additions were made to the compiler that do not work under Visual Studio 2005; however, they do work when used at the command line.
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Almost all of the projects have been renamed and the data projects have also been moved.
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The SDK is no longer 1 solution for all. The search, mail gateways, and OpenId projects are now in separate solutions.
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There are hundreds of compiler warning messages, which means that this was a rushed release as they didn't have time to clean them up.
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Portions of the SDK have been marked obsolete, while others skipped the entire obsoletion process and are just gone. The CSContext object is a perfect example of the later as CSContect.Current.UserID has been removed and will very definitely break many 3rd party addons.
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The Upgrader is not included in the SDK and hasn't been included in previous versions, but it should be. So, you will need to download the upgrader sperarately as it is the only safe way to upgrade a database.
When I upgraded to CS2007.1 back in December of 2007 I also switched over to Team Foundation Server (TFS) for Application Lifecyle Management (ALM). There were some hiccups during the initial conversion from VSS to TFS which included some loss of history (nothing new for VSS users), but it is so much faster and nicer to use that it more than made up. With the way that branching works, I have created several branches that are rooted from the CS SDK. I have a base branch from the SDK that has all of the additions/fixes that I have made. Then each web site has its own branch from this base.
When a new SDK is released, I upgrade the root and make sure that the history is preserved, which can be rather complicated. Once this is done, I merge the root down to the base which is nothing more than just SWEET! From there its a one-by-one merge from the base to each web site, which again is SWEET! Web sites can be based off of any version of the CS SDK and if I work on something for one web site that I'd like to become a part of the base I can do a merge up from the web site to base, which I'm sure you know is SWEET!
I'll probably write another post on the CS2008.5 SDK once I've used it more and have learned about its issues. For now, enjoy the changes...