Longhorn M7.2 Bits Coming to MSDN Subscribers

In case you’ve heard the rumors about a new drop of Longhorn coming to WinHEC attendees, you’ve heard right. The Milestone 7.2 (M7.2) drop of Longhorn will be given to WinHEC attendees this week and will be available to MSDN Subscribers for download RSN*. The plan is to provide regular LH Milestone drops to the community as we have them, regardless of whether they really provide more functionality/stability or not. That way, we keep you guys in synch with what we’re doing and you can give us more relevant feedback.

In M7.2, the big deal is the addition of 3D support in Avalon, including declarative support in XAML. There are better things coming in 3D (as there are in the whole of Longhorn), but this is the initial set of functionality and we’d love to know what you think.

To set your expectations properly, WinHEC attendees and MSDN Subscribers will have access to the M7.2 OS and SDK bits, but will not have access to any matching Visual Studio bits. Neither the PDC Visual Studio installation nor the latest Visual Studio 2005 community drop nor even the upcoming Visual Studio 2005 beta will install or run properly on M7.2 Longhorn. We’re hoping for future LH Milestone drops to include the matching Visual Studio bits, but this one doesn’t. Luckily, MSBuild is included along with the compilers, so you can still build LH code under M7.2 like the pioneers did when they were blazing the Oregon Trail. It’ll put hair on your chest and build strong bones and teeth.

* RSN == Real Soon Now