Microsoft Visual Stutio 2010 Ultimate Beta 2 Installation

This morning I installed Microsoft Visual Stutio 2010 Ultimate Beta 2.

The install started and I worked on something else meanwhile. When the install finished, I got this error message:

Microsoft did not expect the install to complete successfully? (I'm joking here but the screenshot is real).

Looking at the log window I saw that something might have went wrong:

The "Error Log" told me that a component was and was not installed at the same time. I installed Visual Studion 2010 Professional Beta 1 two days ago, removed it yesterday and rebooted the computer after the uninstall.

 Let see what remains in Control Panel/Add or Remove Programs:

Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Beta 1 x86 Redistributable - 10.0.20506

Ha Ha! Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 did not uninstall everything like requested.

I removed that component and try again installing Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2. Good, it worked!

Now let the fun begin!

PS: For those interested in the error log, copy/paste in your favorite editor (I do not want to loose too much screen real-estate).

[10/21/09,11:37:36] VS Scenario: [2] CPrevProductInstalledCheck failed :

Setup has detected the following product(s) currently installed that must be removed. Please uninstall all products listed below and then restart setup. For more information, see the online support page.
 
          - Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2010 Team Suite Beta 1 - ENU 
[10/21/09,11:37:36] VS Scenario: [2] Failed to pass the Warnings/Blocks checks in CVSScenario::Start()
***EndOfSession***[10/22/09,07:54:39] VC 9.0 Runtime (x86): [2] Setup detection logic indicates that this component is NOT installed, but MSI indicates that it IS already installed.  This is usually caused by an incompatible previous version being installed on the system.  Check in Add Remove Programs and uninstall any previous versions of VC 9.0 Runtime (x86).
[10/22/09,07:54:40] VC 9.0 Runtime (x86): [2] Error: Installation failed for component VC 9.0 Runtime (x86). MSI returned error code 1603
[10/22/09,07:54:42] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates VC 9.0 Runtime (x86) is not installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:42] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates VC 10.0 Runtime (x86) was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:42] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Beta 2 was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:42] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Windows Installer 4.5 Update (x86) - Windows XP was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:43] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Visual F# 1.0 Runtime was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:43] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Visual Studio Macro Tools was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:43] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates TFS Object Model (x86) was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:43] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates .NET Framework 4 Multi-Targeting Pack was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:43] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Beta 2 - ENU was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:43] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Web Deployment Tool (x86) was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:44] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 2 - Visual Studio 2010 Tools was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:44] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 2 was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:44] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Silverlight was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:44] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Silverlight 3 SDK was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:44] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Visual Studio 2010 Tools for Office Runtime Beta 2 (x86) was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:44] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Office Development Tools for Visual Studio 2010 (x86) was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:44] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Dotfuscator Software Services - Community Edition was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:45] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Crystal Reports templates for Visual Studio 2010 was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:45] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP2 Beta ENU was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:45] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Tools for SQL Server Compact ENU was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:45] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime v1.0 (x86) ENU was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:45] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Sync Services for ADO.NET v2.0 (x86) ENU was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:46] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Sync Framework Services v1.0 (x86) ENU was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:46] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Sync Framework SDK v1.0 (x86) ENU was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:46] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Performance Collection Tools (x86) was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:46] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft SQL Publishing Wizard 1.4 was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:46] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates SQL Server System CLR Types was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:46] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates SQL Server 2008 R2 Management Objects was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:47] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express Service Pack 1 (x86) Upgrade was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:47] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Data-tier Application Component Framework was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:47] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Data-tier Application Component Project System was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:47] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Transact-SQL Language Service was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:47] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft SharePoint Development Tools was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:47] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 ADO.NET Entity Framework Tools was not attempted to be installed.
[10/22/09,07:54:47] VS70pgui: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft Help 3.0 Beta 2 was not attempted to be installed.

Mercurial SCM

After saying on a Twitter feed that Mercurial rocks, a friend of mine asked me why I choose this SCM over Subversion (SVN). Trying to answer on Twitter (140 characters) was a little bit difficult, so I wrote this entry to explain why I prefer to use Mercurial over SVN.

First reason: Simplicity
Last summer, I started a small project in Visual Studio on my laptop and wanted to have file history over my test project. I tried to use SVN and configure it to work only on my file system (without any SVN server). After two hours of unsuccessful work I started to look other at options and discovered Mercurial. I installed it, read the instruction and after 15 minutes I had my SCM working on my folders without any server. Another 15 minutes later, I had Mercurial integration in Visual Studio. So far so good!

Second reason: Distributed development in a decentralized system
The biggest advantage of Mercurial over SVN is the ability to work in “disconnected” mode without loosing any feature of the SCM. You can work locally, commit how many times you want, create branches, … and when you are satisfied of your work you can submit all of it to the “parent” repository. At first, I found the decentralized system strange (I spent the last three years using Perforce), but after experimenting it, I started to appreciate that feature.

Third reason: Easy to start your own Source Server
After a week I needed to setup a Mercurial server to be able to share my repository with my friends. I started by experimenting “hg serve” (the very simple server distributed with Mercurial) but I choose to install a more robust solution. Even if the procedure seems complicated, I succeeded to install my server without difficulty following the well documented “Publishing Repositories with hgwebdir.cgi”.

I’m still continuing to use Mercurial for my personal projects, even at work (the official tool there is SVN) when I’m working on small projects. It’s a lightweight solution that doesn’t need anything special to work well. I just wanted to share my positive experience and invited you to try it.