Microsoft
This afternoon has been a bit of a battle with Microsoft.
Now bear in mind none of these installers actually mentioned these as prerequisites in the installation process.
I started working on a little game about 2 years ago. I dug it out, spewed when I saw the state of the code and upgraded it to .Net 3.5. Once it was all updated in content and style I looked at it again and realised I should really split up into a data layer to properly use as a demo/project.
I realised I had removed SQL Server 2005 and the 2008 developer pack came with a trial rather than a full version. I remembered about Compact Edition which you are supposed to be able to ship with your code.
I go to install it and it fails as I don’t have Windows Installer 4.5 installed. So I go install that, and then Compact Edition.
Still can’t do anything, need the tools for it.
I go to install the tools and it barfs complaining I don’t have Powershell installed.
I find Powershell and install it.
I then proceed in the 10stage or so install, it seems happy enough.
Fill in all Database account details, carries on.
Boom – you need Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 installed.
This wasn’t pointed out earlier in the requirements
section? I also thought I had it installed as it doesn’t appear in Windows Update.
I download the Service pack
or should I say the installer for it. Run it and it complains as I have no space. I only have 2GB on drive C. Drive D has about 20GB free. It is also where I have Visual Studio installed. There is no option to change the download location.
What the hell is this crap.
After installing 4 things when installers barf it is still barfing and refusing to install. It shouldn’t be this hard to install a sodding database server. I tried looking for what other databases are usable in Visual Studio but had no luck yet. I was hoping to use Compact as it is usable by the database tools I am used to using in work and I wanted to experiment with Linq a bit.
In work I have the full service pack on a DVD, may have to copy that if I can’t find it online.