The VS 2012 ALM Virtual Machine and VS 2012 Update 1 (In short, there's an updated VM coming, don't install it on this VM if you don't have too)

Brian Keller - Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 and the ALM Virtual Machine

"Now that Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 is available, several people have asked whether or not I am updating my ALM virtual machine. The answer is yes – and it will be available by sometime next week. Watch my blog for details. There are some really nice improvements in Update 1 that I think developers, architects, project managers and testers alike will enjoy.

A longer question I have also been asked is whether or not Update 1 can be installed by end-users into my virtual machine. The answer is “not really” (unless you want to jump through some workaround steps). The reason for this requires a bit longer of an explanation.

If you have worked with my virtual machine you may have noticed that every time you boot it up, the date and time jumps to May 16, 2012. The reason for this is that in order to show a pseudo-realistic example of how Team Foundation Server can be used to support an actual development team, we need to pin the system date to a specific day in the middle of an iteration.

...

Which brings us to Visual Studio 2012 Update 1. If you try installing Update 1 into my virtual machine you will notice that you are prompted to reboot during the installation process. While you won’t receive any errors or warnings during the setup/upgrade process, if you attempt this you will start to notice problems later on – especially in web access. This is because you are going back in time every time you reboot.

I know a few people were burned by this and I’m sorry for the time you may have wasted going down this path...."

Since Brian bought me a beer or three at //build/ (well he walked up to the open bar and got me the beers, but it's the thought... ;) it's only fair I share this tidbit. When the update VM ships I'll post a follow-up as well.

The key is that one is coming soon, so hold onto your VS2012 Update 1 horses and let Brian do all the hard work of upgrading this VM.

BTW his post has some interesting background on this VM and some of the things he's done to make it so (like the auto-magic date setting, etc).

 

Related Past Post XRef:
The big BK has updated the Visual Studio 2012 RC ALM Virtual Machine and Hands-on-Labs

VS 11 ALM DemoMates updated for the Beta
Visual Studio/TFS11 ALM Demo's... Mate! See the VS/TFS 11 ALM's hands-on-labs in DemoMate form
Visual Studio 11 ALM VHD's, VirtualBoxed (and even on x86 hosts too)
Want to play with Visual Studio 11 & TFS 11 Dev Preview but don't want to install it (and have access to a Hyper-V server)? Here's a VHD just for