It&#39;s That GAX &amp; GAT Time... GAX/GAT February 2008 Release (aka a Kindler and Gentler Upgrade and Uninstall story)

Saturday, February 16, 2008

It's That GAX & GAT Time... GAX/GAT February 2008 Release (aka a Kindler and Gentler Upgrade and Uninstall story)

Microsoft Downloads - Guidance Automation Extensions - February 2008 Release

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The Guidance Automation Extensions (GAX) enable you to run guidance packages, such as the Guidance Automation Toolkit (GAT) or those included in Software Factories or third-party tools. You can use the Guidance Automation Toolkit (GAT) to author or customize guidance packages

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Visual Studio 2005 (Team System, Professional Edition or Standard Edition) and/or Visual Studio 2008 (Team System, Professional Edition or Standard Edition).
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Microsoft Downloads - Guidance Automation Toolkit for Visual Studio 2008 - February 2008 Release

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The Guidance Automation Toolkit (GAT) allows you to author guidance packages and software factories which expose reusable code and pattern assets directly in Visual Studio 2008. It is designed to simplify integrating reusable code into applications, by automating development activities that developers would usually perform manually. By using the toolkit, architects can ensure repetitive and often error-prone activities are performed in a consistent way, streamlining and accelerating the development process.
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Visual Studio 2008 (Team System, Professional Edition or Standard Edition)
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I'm sure I'll be needing these downloads for my VS2008 install at some point...

Update #1 2/16/2008 @ 1:40PM PST:

Tom Hollander's blog - Gosh! GAT/GAX is Golden!

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Updating GAX.

If you have a previous version of GAX installed on Visual Studio 2005, it will be updated to the February 2008 release of GAX. You are no longer required to uninstall GAX and the corresponding guidance packages.
Guidance packages that are registered with the previous version of GAX will automatically be registered with the current version of GAX (GAT, however, will require an update – see the information below).

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Improved Uninstaller. During GAX uninstallation, you can click the Check Installed Packages button for the list of all registered guidance packages. If you proceed with GAX removal, the uninstaller will only attempt to automatically uninstall those guidance packages that were registered manually using GAT. If you have guidance packages that were installed through an MSI(s), you should not proceed with removing GAX. Instead, you should use the Add or Remove Programs tool to uninstall these guidance packages.

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NICE! In my mind, these are huge improvements and removes one of my main "issues" with GAX (that upgrading was a major pain) and really improves its deployment story.