NuPattern Updated!

We just released our first minor update to NuPattern, version 1.3.21.0. No big deal, it just fixes some minor issues for the previous major release.

However, for the first time EVER we appear in the ‘Updates’ of the Extension Manager in Visual Studio.

I have to tell you that this IS a big deal to me, and perhaps others on the project who started with the project back in late 2009. We have had to wait a very long time (more than 3 years) to have presence in this nifty piece of UI with our stuff in it. Helping make sure everyone stays up to date with the technology! It is huge for us.

 

If you are wondering why we have had to wait so long for this, here is a summary:

• The NuPattern project started in late 2009, and our first release followed 3 weeks later. We had something like 15 regular releases in 2010 as the project was incubated, proven and hardened. However, all these releases were hidden from public view as part of a ‘internal’ enterprise initiative between Microsoft and Raytheon. You can learn more about that here and here. After that initiative concluded, VSPAT (as it was known at the time) continued to be hardened and applied to other Microsoft initiatives, for other enterprise customers, none of which saw the public light of day. It was used in a public ‘Microsoft Amalga’ product release as their tooling platform, but ‘Microsoft Amalga’ is not really the sort of product you would buy shrink-wrapped, or for general consumption. The platform of VSPAT was as such, kept internal at Microsoft.
• In late 2011, Microsoft finally open sourced the project on CodePlex, and we had the 19th release (1.2.19.0) on the Visual Studio Gallery. This being the first celebrated public release.
• Then disaster struck. Further releases of VSPAT were seriously hampered because of the critical ‘Feature Builder Power Tool’ dependency that we had was not being supported for VS2012 by Microsoft. Prevented us releasing any updates, and that held us up for another 8 months!
• That issue finally resolved, in March of this year we released the 20th version (1.3.20.0) of NuPattern, but the branding, identity and binary compatibility had to be seriously overhauled because of the transition from Microsoft ownership to Outercurve ownership, and with the support for VS2012, and integration of the ‘Feature Extension Runtime’ – i.e. no chance possible for an automatic update of NuPattern there.

Not until yesterday could we finally put out there a release (1.3.21.0) that could ‘automatically’ continue the journey of NuPattern.

 

We hope you all update soon, and look forward to new updates as we move the technology forward.

Congrats again to all that made this journey possible.