Deployment Channels
I stated in an earlier post that "I am the person in charge of getting product updates (service packs and hotfixes) for Visual Studio and the .NET Framework into distribution channels like Windows Update, Microsoft Update, and the Microsoft Download Center." It occured to me that some of you might care which updates go where. If you do, read on!
In a nutshell, updates to the .NET Framework go on Windows Update while updates for everything else (in this case, Visual Studio) go on Microsoft Update. Because all Windows Update content is on Microsoft Update as well (but not vice-versa), one could look at that the other way around and say that all updates (Visual Studio and the .NET Framework) go to Microsoft Update while only .NET Framework updates go to Windows Update. All updates that go to either Windows Update or Microsoft Update must go to the Microsoft Download Center as well.
Tables have been known to help:
Developer Division Deployment Channels
| Product |
Windows Update |
Microsoft Update |
Download Center |
| .NET Framework |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| Visual Studio 2005 |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
| Visual Studio 2002, 2003 |
No |
TBD |
Yes |
You may be saying to yourself, "I've never seen any Visual Studio updates on Microsoft Update." That's true, but we're working on it. Expect to see updates targeting Visual Studio 2005 on Microsoft Update starting in Q1 of calendar year 2006. We will also be evaluating whether to service Visual Studio.NET 2002 and Visual Studio.NET 2003 in the same way. These latter Visual Studio versions (2002, 2003) are more complicated because they were released before Microsoft Update existed and therefore were not built with Microsoft Update integration in mind. We'll need to make do with what we have for these. Let me know how we do!
