Installing Fusion and creating a Windows virtual machine
For this article series, VMware Fusion was used as the virtualization software for Mac. So, before any virtual machines (Windows, Ubuntu / Linux) were created, Fusion software was installed on the Mac. Please refer to the following article for notes on installing Fusion on the Mac:
Installing Fusion on Mac OS X
Then a Windows Vista Ultimate virtual machine was created on the Mac with Fusion software. For notes on creating a Vista virtual machine on Mac, please refer to the following article:
Installing Windows on a Mac with Fusion
This article goes through the installation of Visual Studio on a Windows virtual machine as created above.
Starting the installation
The DVD inserted into the Mac DVD drive should automatically be recognized from the Vista installation on virtual machine. You will see the standard Visual Studio setup dialog box.
Figure 1. Installing Visual Studio on a Vista virtual machine created with Fusion. The installer provides three options - installing ide/compiler itself, installing MSDN, and checking for service packs.
Then you will see the License screen. A place to provide the product key.
Here Visual Studio is being installed on a virtual machine. The Windows Vista virtual machine was given 40 GB of disk space. More than two-thirds was already taken -- some for the Windows Vista Ultimate itself, some for the MS Office Ultimate I installed before. Only 4.4 GB of disk space is required for installing Visual Studio 2008.
Figure 2. Size of installation. The required size for installing Visual Studio 2008 Professional is 4.4 GB. This Vista virtual machine has a disk of 40 GB.
Figure 3. The tools installed with Visual Studio 2008 Professional. Everything is chosen to be installed on this virtual machine, except X64 compilers and tools.
With Visual Studio 2008 Professional, you will get the following and more:
- Compilers and integrated development environments (IDEs)
- Obfuscator (Dotfuscator)
- SQL Server Express and others
Following sections briefly describe the above entities.
Compilers and integrated development environments (IDEs)
Compilers and development environments for three languages:
- Visual C#
- Visual C++
- Visual Basic
The development environment (IDE) for all these three languages is Visual Studio, which provides source code editor, integrated debugging environment, compilation facilities for producing binaries for various environments, etc.
VS 2008 also includes Visual Web Developer, which is used to develop web applications. This uses ASP.NET infrastructure to build applications for the web; you can use Visual C# or Visual Basic (and other programming languages) to code these applications.
Both Visual C# and Visual Basic can be used to develop Windows, Web, Smart Device, and Office applications. Visual C++ offers older Windows technologies like MFC and other low-level functionality. It’s much easier to use C# or VB over C++ for the newer development (.Net based development, web development, etc.)
Obfuscator (Dotfuscator)
The binaries (assemblies) produced for .Net Framework can easily be decompiled because these assemblies contain so much information. In essence, the .Net compilers mentioned above (Visual C#, Visual Basic, etc.) take the source code written in a very readable high-level language (like C# and VB) and convert it into a little less readable .Net assembly language (called MSIL - Microsoft Intermediate Language). This language gets converted into the much less readable processor assembly language at runtime.
In order to safeguard the source code, Visual Studio 2008 includes an obfuscator called Dotfuscator Community Edition. This makes the MSIL a little less readable by replacing the variable names with things like a, b, c, etc. (hard to guess the meaning of the variables after they are replaced).
SQL Server Express and others
VS 2008 also includes SQL Server 2005 Express, which is fully integrated into the user interface of the development environment. You will also get SQL Server Compact, which is different from SQL Server Express. The Express version is a server-based software, meaning, some services will be running on the computer. These services provide the database functionality. The Compact version can be used as the database for the standalone desktop programs or as a data storage mechanism for smart devices.
Also included is the reporting software called Crystal Reports. A small set of icons, cursors, and bitmaps are also included.
Figure 4. Visual Studio 2008 components being installed. These components include the compilers, ide, SQL Server Express and Compact, and other tools. They install fine on this Vista virtual machine without any problem.
Installing MSDN
MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) is the help/library for Visual Studio (for Microsoft development technologies in general). Full installation of MSDN will take up another 2.1 GB.
So, complete Visual Studio 2008 and MSDN will take up 4.4 + 2.1 = 6.5 GB of disk space. That’s little more than 15% of the disk space on this virtual machine. This Vista virtual machine was created with 40 GB of disk space.
Figure 5. Installing MSDN. Takes about 2.1 GB of disk space. This Vista virtual machine was created with a 40GB virtual disk.
Installing Visual Studio 2008 SP1
So far, Visual Studio 2008 and MSDN have been installed on this Windows Vista Ultimate virtual machine created with VMware Fusion. To be up-to-date (at this point), Visual Studio 2008 SP1 needs to be installed. This is also required for installing SQL Server 2008.
Figure 6. Installing Visual Studio 2008 SP1 on a Vista virtual machine. Many pieces of software (including Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007, SQL Server, etc.) are impacted.
Summary
In summary, the installation of Visual Studio 2008 and MSDN on a Fusion created virtual machine went fine. No problems with regards to speed of installation and disk space as plenty of disk space is given on a fast Mac.
More Articles on Fusion and Visual Studio
The following article has thoughts on using Visual Studio 2008 on a Windows Vista virtual machine. Several sample applications (command line, Windows Forms, Web, and Games applications) are compiled and tested from Visual Studio 2008 in a Vista virtual machine on a Mac.
Using Visual Studio on a Mac with Fusion
This article series on Fusion goes through a couple of virtual machines created with Windows Vista and Ubuntu operating systems. These articles also go through using popular applications like Microsoft Office, SQL Server, and Visual Studio on these virtual machines created with Fusion. They also discuss the pros and cons of virtual machines, graphics, sound, video, and Internet connections in them.
Article Series: Fusion on a Mac
