Introduction
Many technologies exist in the world of Information Technology. The existence of any technology depends upon the user, or say the developer, who uses it. The technologies change very rapidly in the current scenario. I must say that if any company releases a product then the company must provide the fixes for all the issues that occur during the lifecycle of that product.
In that context, Microsoft announced that the Visual Studio 2012 Update 4 RC 1 is available. As I said earlier, any company must fix issues, Microsoft fixes issues like Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio LightSwitch in this release. Let's come learn about this release and the information about this release.
How to Obtain Update
Microsoft released the latest update for Visual Studio 2012, Update 4 RC 1 (Visual Studio 2012.4) on July 29, 2013. This release also fixed many issues. If you want to download the latest update of Visual Studio 2012 then click on the following link:
Visual Studio 2012 Update
To download this update please review the following points:
- Details
| Version |
Date Published |
| 2012 |
7/29/2013 |
| File Name |
File Size |
| VS2012.4 RC.exe |
1.3 MB |
| tfs_express.exe |
735 KB |
| tfs_server.exe |
735 KB |
| VS2012.4 RC TFS Express enu.iso |
483.3 MB |
| VS2012.4 RC TFS Server enu.iso |
1.1 GB |
As you can see, there are multiple files available for download. You can select and choose an option for download when you click the download. Microsoft provides a value to their customers continuously, it also adds new capabilities to features in Visual Studio 2012. This update is a Release Candidate (RC) for Visual Studio 2012.
- System Requirements
There are the following operating systems that are supported:
- Windows 7 Service Pack 1
- Windows 8
- Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
- Windows Server 2008 SP2
- Windows Server 2012
- Virus-Free
This release is totally virus free because it is scanned by Microsoft. The latest virus-detection software is used by Microsoft for scanning the update. One more thing that is more noticeable is that Microsoft saved this file on its security-enhanced servers that strictly prohibits unauthorized access.
How to Install the Update
This update is applied to Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server (TFS). The mechanism of both installations are not similar. When you install Visual Studio, it installs on the top of whatever is already installed on the computer. On the other hand TFS update is a blueprint that replaces whatever is installed previously on the computer. You need to ensure that you have a backup of all your important data because if TFS update fails to install, it is unable to restart the update or roll back to an earlier version of TFS.
Fixed Issues
There are two main issues that are fixed in this release. They are:
- Team Foundation Server
There are the following main points in TFS:
Administration and Operations
- Suppose you install the TFS application-tier server on a computer on which there is not an instance of Microsoft SQL Server. You do not configure the Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services. If you have this situation then you cannot upgrade the application-tier server.
- You do not need to worry about the configuration of scheduled backups because it is no longer blocked when your SQL Server service for TFS 2012 is running as a virtual account.
- In the second and third update of TFS, transactional backups record a failure when they try to run while a full or differential backup is running.
Build Automation
- Suppose you create any type of check-in app build definition using the TFS Server 2010. Now, you upgrade your TFS 2010 to TFS 2012 and you use your upgraded TFS server with TFS 2010 build agents, the build fails on TFS 2010.
- Now suppose you create a build definition using the the default template in TFS 2010 and you upgrade TFS 2010 to TFS 2012. The build definition is modified to run against a newly upgraded template.
Version Control
- If any user opens any view in which the user tries to filter history by the name of any user then an error message is received. The issue also occurs if the display name contains any type of special character such as comma.
Work Item Tracking
- If any user browses any page in Internet Explorer in which a work item store is used then there is a 1 minute delay. The issue also occurs if the collection exceeds the limit of the containing projects, which is 175 projects.
Web Access
- You cannot access any TFS web access pages. In brief, if you want to connect to a TFS Server 2012 by using any browser with an unexpected agent string then an internal error page will be displayed instead of the requested page.
- LightSwitch
- When you install Visual Studio Update 3, the following apps do not display localized strings, instead these apps display English strings.
- LightSwitch HTML Applications (VB or C#)
- Upgraded LightSwitch Applications (VB or C#)
Important Information
There are the following extra and important information about this update:
System Restart
When installation is complete, a system restart is not necessary.
Languages
The following languages supported:
- Chinese (Simplified)
- Chinese (Traditional)
- Czech
- English
- French
- German
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Russian
- Polish
- Portuguese (Brazil)
- Spanish
- Turkish
Supported Architectures
- 32-bit (x86)
- 64-bit (X64)
Hardware Requirements
- 1.6 GHz or later
- 1 GB RAM
- 1 GB space in HDD
- DirectX-9
Applicable To
- Microsoft Visual Studio Premium 2012
- Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2012
- Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web
- Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows 8
- Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop
- Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Phone
Summary
In this article I introduced the information about the latest update for Visual Studio 2012 that is Visual Studio Update 4 RC 1. I also described the features, installion requirements and descriptions about this update. This article will help you to determine the fixed issues related with the previous versions of Visual Studio.
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