Free version of the well known Visual Studio 2005 IDE and many programming tools included.
You need .NET Framework 2.0.
Selected Test Results (selected in 'Test Results' table below)
What works
Everything so far as I have tested. Debugging works, building works, controls work, everything.
What does not
Installing does not work out of the box - you need to install the .NET 2.0 framework first using
winetricks dotnet20
otherwise the installer will crash.
Not exactly "doesn't work", but there's a slight graphics glitch (which only affects VB, not your program) in which icons which should be transparent in the "toolbox" have a black background
After IDE start, the start page constantly refreshes, eating CPU
This is bug 10522. Close the "Start page" to work around this problem.
VS.NET 2005 Express Editions free ISO Image Downloads
As of 2009/04/01 Microsoft has removed the public links to 2005 Express Editions downloads in favour of 2008 Versions. Fortunately the direct download links to full (offline) install images still work:
Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition (449.848 KiB)
err:ole:CoGetClassObject class {b5f8350b-0548-48b1-a6ee-88bd00b4a5e7} not registered
This is bug 12659. The following messages in console are an indication of this problem:
err:ole:CoGetClassObject class {b5f8350b-0548-48b1-a6ee-88bd00b4a5e7} not registered
err:ole:CoGetClassObject no class object {b5f8350b-0548-48b1-a6ee-88bd00b4a5e7} could be created for context 0x1
Setup has encountered a problem while trying to copy $shtdwn$.req
This is Bug 9158. Only happens with online-installer version (not retail from .ISO image). Use the following workaround in console:
$ _SFX_CAB_SHUTDOWN_REQUEST=1 wine ./vcssetup.exe
Compiler gets stuck during code generation (PDB server)
You can create a shell script that starts both mspdbsrv.exe and
VCEXpress.exe, if mspdbsrv.exe is already running, it will be ignored
the second time it is invoked.
/home/yourlogin/.wine is not owned by you / (Permission denied)
Never run wine as root (su, sudo)! Wine doesn't require to be run as root!
You will screw your WINEPREFIX and possibly other things up. If you have run Wine as root you need to:
$ sudo rm -rf ~/.wine
and then run winecfg to set Wine folder structure back up. If you used winetricks script as root you might also need to:
$ sudo rm -rf ~/winetrickscache
Again: Just run wine as regular user and all should be fine.
Can't find MSPDB80.DLL (some command line tools fail)
If you run some command line tools and get an error message like this:
err:module:import_dll Library mspdb80.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\VC\\bin\\link.exe") not found
err:module:LdrInitializeThunk Main exe initialization for L"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\VC\\bin\\link.exe" failed, status c0000135
You need to add the following path to your environment:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE;
Use registry editor to add the path to "PATH" key value:
