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Why doesn't Docker Tools for Visual Studio 2015 show the [New] button?

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If you've attempted to install the Docker Tools for Visual Studio - August Release, starting on Friday August 21st, you may have fallen into the trap of not reading the descriptive text below that explains what we should have done for you.

Quick answer: Follow the detailed instructions for installing Microsoft ASP.NET and Web Tools 2015 (Beta6) – Visual Studio 2015 

Longer Answer - what happened:

In addition to supporting Windows Containers, the August release of Docker Tools for Visual Studio was updated to support Visual Studio 2015 RTM. Some changes were made to Web Tools Essentials between RC and RTM that we didn't get everything checked in and complete in time. As a result, to make the Docker Tools work with ASP.NET publishing we had to take an updated version of WTE. Rather than have one off versions of WTE, and since Docker Tools for Visual Studio targets developers working with ASP.NET 5, we aligned our install experience with the Beta releases of WTE.

When we released the 0.6 release last Wednesday, we were chaining in the WTE beta 6. If you were on a full English version of Visual Studio, life was good. A nice simple, (albeit long) experience. Unfortunately, since the preview of Docker Tools for VS isn't yet localized, developers with non-English versions of VS would get in a broken state as we weren't chaining in the language packs for WTE. To avoid others falling into this broken trap, last Friday we pulled WTE from the Docker Tools installer, and placed a nice little ToDo link in the download page of the extension. It was a quick decision we heavily debated as there were concerns others would fall into this trap, and we apologize. 

We are actively working to fix the install experience in two phases:

  • Phase 1 - We will ship an update to the Docker Tools for Visual Studio that will block the install until you first install the proper beta version of WTE. This will also include a few bug fixes that we've found since last Wednesday. We hope to have this out soon.
  • Phase 2 - Docker Tools got caught in this spot as the Web Publishing Experience doesn't have an extensibility model, which meant we needed to ship all of WTE just to get the Docker hook in. The current plan is to have this extensibility point in place for Visual Studio Update 1. This will allow us to easily rev the Docker Tools without having to redistribute updates to WTE.

Again, we really appreciate all the early adopters that are trying out our tools, and providing feedback. Your feedback is very important, and we are working hard to give the best install experience we can based on all the moving parts. These days, we are working more iteratively, giving you early access to work in progress, and sometimes portions are a bit rough, including the install experience. 

Thanks for your patience,

Steve

Comments

  • Anonymous
    September 21, 2015
    While things seem to install alright, when I attempt to publish my Docker project to Azure, I get errors in the powershell scripts from MS. It seems like something else is still missing from the downloads.

  • Anonymous
    September 22, 2015
    Hi Mark, can you use the contact link in the top right corner to send me the errors you're seeing? Also, be sure to have the latest docker tools from the gallery as we've made some fixes recently for the scripts. Thanks Steve

  • Anonymous
    December 06, 2015
    Hi Steve, Apparently with the latest build (11/24/2015), there are issues on some fairly basic scenarios. I've trouble with fresh VS 2015 installation with PS script being create. Add-AzureRMAccount : The term 'Add-AzureRMAccount' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again. This holds true further for New-AzureRmResourceGroup and New-AzureRmResourceGroupDeployment too. Further, if I try to create a VM from portal and continue from Connection tab under Publish dialog, the DockerFile isn't created (left auto-generated though)

  • Anonymous
    December 07, 2015
    Hi Usman, Thanks for the feedback. We have been chasing a few demons in the complexity of setup dependencies. For the dockerfile creation, please make sure you have the latest version installed. Unfortunately, because we wanted to provide a good setup experience, bundling in the dependent technologies like the updated PowerShell tools, we aren’t using a VSIX deployment. Which means you don’t get notifications that an update exists. It’s a limitation of the Visual Studio Extensions infrastructure we’re looking into. The other thing is we’ve noticed that the PowerShell tools requires a reboot for the tools to take effect. Not great, we’d like to find a fix, but give that a try. Steve

  • Anonymous
    December 28, 2015
    The comment has been removed