About a week ago we quietly released a new version of the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio 2010 (can our product names get longer?).
The easiest way to get the tools is to use the Web Platform Installer. The WPI is THE best way to get tools, SDKs, and configure you servers for use with the web and the cloud. Download and install it, and then start it up. To install the new Windows Azure tools simply search for “Azure Tools” and it will come right up. Click the Add button, and then the Install button at the bottom. You can easily select multiple items, and install them all in one go.
The great thing about WPI is that it doesn’t just install the bits for you, which saves you time in finding, downloading, and installing stuff. It also knows what the prerequisite requirements are, and installs them as well. It can also set the proper configurations in place.
What does the new tool version include?
1. Profiler – You can now profiler your roles while they are running in Windows Azure. Once you have a role deployed, you can right click on an instance in the server explorer and choose ‘View Profiling Report.’ This will help you find performance issues in your applications.
2. MVC3 – In the older tools, MVC2 was a listed role template, and you could always hack MVC3 to work. Now MVC3 is listed as a role template as well. This will automatically include and ship the MVC3 assemblies with your project, so you don’t have to remember to mark them as copylocal.
3. Multiple Service Configurations – As ASP.NET developers we have been spoiled with the great configuration management tools in VS. You could have several web.configs (one each for debug, qa, staging, and production) and then have the right config deployed as needed when you published. In Windows Azure we had to manage service configurations by hand. If you wanted to change storage account connection strings between dev and prod (and who doesn’t) you had to REMEMBER to do this every time. This always leads to a disaster, embarrassment, and sometimes the donning of a dunce cap in the office.
Now you can have multiple service configuration files, each tagged to you own defined setup. Most people will have at least ‘local’ and ‘cloud’. But I would guess you might have also ‘QA Cloud’.
But, wait, that’s not all! We now have package validation. VS will now politely remind you if you make some of the more common mistakes that will cost you time. For example, if you try to publish a project that has local assemblies that AREN’T marked copylocal, you will be reminded so.
And lastly a few notes I copied straight from the web site because I didn’t think I could add anything by re-interpreting them, and I wouldn’t want mess anything up since they are sort of important. All of this progress doesn’t come at a cost. There is one breaking change:
Caution
Breaking Change: When you build your Windows Azure application the folder named csx is no longer created by the Version 1.4 (August 2011) release. The files in this folder enabled you to use csrun to run your application using the Windows Azure compute emulator. If you used the contents of this folder with Team Build to run your application locally and test the application before you deployed, you must now set the PackageForDevFabric property to true in your build template.
Important
With the release of the 1.4.1 Refresh of Windows Azure SDK and Windows Azure Tools Version 1.4 (March 2011), Web Deploy was enabled for the Windows Azure Visual Studio tools. When you are developing and testing a Windows Azure application, you can use Web Deploy to publish changes incrementally for your web roles. Web Deploy is not for use in a production environment. For more information about how to use Web Deploy, see Enable Web Deploy When You Publish Your Application.