Visual Studio 2005 on USB Stick

[hufaunder]

I often find myself in the situation where at a customers site I have
to do some quick debugging or program changes. Obvioiusly, I do not
want to install VS2005 on their system. Is there a ways to install
VS2005 on a big and fast USB stick, plug it into a computer without
VS2005 and start using it there? If not are there any alternatives.

Thanks

 

[Guest]

Hufaunder:

I don't think you can accomplish that with a USB drive, for Visual Studio is
very integrated into the OS [i.e. the registry]. And I don't think you can
remote connect -- or tunnel -- into another computer, for the program is
LOCAL only to the computer you're running it on. Again, I don't think it's
possible, but I may be wrong.


Trecius

 

[Chris Mullins [MVP - C#]]

I often find myself in the situation where at a customers site I have
to do some quick debugging or program changes. Obvioiusly, I do not
want to install VS2005 on their system. Is there a ways to install
VS2005 on a big and fast USB stick, plug it into a computer without
VS2005 and start using it there? If not are there any alternatives.

Not very likley...

In that scenario your realistic options are:
- Create a VM-Ware or Virtual PC image with an O/S and your dev tools.
- Bring a Laptop.

You can, of course, copy the .Net compilers to a USB stick, along with your
favorite text editor. You can debug using WinDbg & Son of Strike (which can
also be on the USB stick), and then edit your code & compile. This option
though would really suck compared to using VS.Net.

 

[Ignacio Machin \( .NET/ C# MVP \)]

Hi,

As other people mentioned it's not possible.

Another possible option is that if your client has internet connection you
could remote to your dev machine @ your office and do the changes.

Personally I do not like to have my source codes around so I would not use a
client machine for any debugging/compilation.

Of course you can always bring your own notebook

 

[hufaunder]

Hi,

As other people mentioned it's not possible.

Another possible option is that if your client has internet connection you
could remote to your dev machine @ your office and do the changes.

Personally I do not like to have my source codes around so I would not use a
client machine for any debugging/compilation.

Of course you can always bring your own notebook

--
Ignacio Machinwww.laceupsolutions.com






- Show quoted text -

Thanks for all the input. Currently I am bringing my laptop to do
changes and then copy to program over to the clients machine. Of
course that makes it impossible to do any real debugging. Therefore, I
was looking for a solution where I can have both VS2005 and my source
on a memory stick. That way none of the two is ever touching their
computer.

Is there any other way this could be achieved?

Thanks

 

[Peter Duniho]

Thanks for all the input. Currently I am bringing my laptop to do
changes and then copy to program over to the clients machine. Of
course that makes it impossible to do any real debugging. Therefore, I
was looking for a solution where I can have both VS2005 and my source
on a memory stick. That way none of the two is ever touching their
computer.

Is there any other way this could be achieved?

Well, other than having your client use the program on your own laptop
for the purpose of reproducing bugs, another option is to install the
remote debugging component on your client's computer and then debug from
your laptop using the installed Visual Studio there.

It does mean installing at least that one part of Visual Studio on the
client's computer, but at least the source code would not need to be
there. Given your apparent need to debug based on the software
installed on the client's computer, this may in fact be the most
appropriate solution.

By the way, I'm a little confused by the "none of the two is ever
touching their computer" statement. If you have VS and your source code
on a memory stick, and you then plug that memory stick into your
client's computer, all of the contents on the memory stick are not
"touching" your client's computer. It's not clear to me whether your
concern is one of security, or just of practicality, but if the former
then using a memory stick isn't a good solution anyway.

Pete

 

[Samuel R. Neff]

The .NET 2.0 SDK includes "Microsoft CLR Debugger" which is a stripped
down version of visual studio and works very well for debugging (in
many ways better than VS since it's stripped down and runs faster).

It needs to be installed but it's much smaller than full VS.

Sam

 

[Rad [Visual C# MVP]]

I often find myself in the situation where at a customers site I have
to do some quick debugging or program changes. Obvioiusly, I do not
want to install VS2005 on their system. Is there a ways to install
VS2005 on a big and fast USB stick, plug it into a computer without
VS2005 and start using it there? If not are there any alternatives.

Thanks

I don't believe you can do that, because VS has dependencies in the
file system and registry after installation.

If it is for quick and dirty coding, you can use Jeff Key's Snippet
Compiler.

Alternatively you can carry around on your flash disk SharpDevelop,
which is pretty functional. You can install it on a client PC, make
your changes and uninstall it when you're done in a few minutes

 

[Brian]

I often find myself in the situation where at a customers site I have
to do some quick debugging or program changes. Obvioiusly, I do not
want to install VS2005 on their system. Is there a ways to install
VS2005 on a big and fast USB stick, plug it into a computer without
VS2005 and start using it there? If not are there any alternatives.

Thanks

An interesting challenge. Here is what you might try:
use a clean box that has the same machine name and network info as the
one you want to work on and
1. Make a backup of your Registry
2. Run filemon some other filewatching program
3. Attach your USB drive to the box
4. Install VS on the USB drive
5. Do a textual Dif on the old registry vs the new registry
6. Copy all of the different registry keys to a reg file
7. Look at the filemon output and copy all of the new files on the C
directory over to the USB drive in a specific location
8. When you are on the other machine
- backup their registry
- apply your reg file
- copy the C drive over

I don't really know if that works. If someone wants to test that out
and let us know that would be cool.

 

[Sheng Jiang[MVP]]

see if your USB can hold a virtual PC image that has win2k+VS2005...maybe xp

 

[Nicolas Noakes]

see if your USB can hold a virtual PC image that has win2k+VS2005...maybe
xp

This won't help the OP to debug on the client's system, in this case he may
as well just take a laptop with him

Nicolas

 

[hufaunder]

Well, other than having your client use the program on your own laptop
for the purpose of reproducing bugs, another option is to install the
remote debugging component on your client's computer and then debug from
your laptop using the installed Visual Studio there.

It does mean installing at least that one part of Visual Studio on the
client's computer, but at least the source code would not need to be
there. Given your apparent need to debug based on the software
installed on the client's computer, this may in fact be the most
appropriate solution.

By the way, I'm a little confused by the "none of the two is ever
touching their computer" statement. If you have VS and your source code
on a memory stick, and you then plug that memory stick into your
client's computer, all of the contents on the memory stick are not
"touching" your client's computer. It's not clear to me whether your
concern is one of security, or just of practicality, but if the former
then using a memory stick isn't a good solution anyway.

Pete

Thanks for the input. I will give the remote debugging a try.

Regarding "none of the two is every touching their computer" what you
describe is exactly what I want. I want to bring a ready VS2005
without having to install it on the client's computer. Also I don't
want the source code to be on their system. Even if I delete it and
clean the recycle bin they still could get to it. Plus human error has
to be considered too (not delete it, not empty recycle bin, not using
a "secure delete" program, etc).

The reason I cannot use my laptop to run the application is because
there are several PCI cards in the clients computer that the program
needs to access. Obviously, I can't stick them into my laptop.

Thanks

 

[Peter Duniho]

Thanks for the input. I will give the remote debugging a try.

Regarding "none of the two is every touching their computer" what you
describe is exactly what I want. I want to bring a ready VS2005
without having to install it on the client's computer. Also I don't
want the source code to be on their system. Even if I delete it and
clean the recycle bin they still could get to it. Plus human error has
to be considered too (not delete it, not empty recycle bin, not using
a "secure delete" program, etc).

Well, the point of my comment is that even putting everything on a USB
drive doesn't address that issue. If the source code is on the drive,
and the drive is plugged into the client's computer, then there exists
the theoretical possibility that the source code could be copied to the
client's computer, intentionally or otherwise, with or without your
knowledge.

The reason I cannot use my laptop to run the application is because
there are several PCI cards in the clients computer that the program
needs to access. Obviously, I can't stick them into my laptop.

Yeah, I can't believe laptop design hasn't solved that issue yet.

Seriously though, hopefully the remote debugging will work for you. It
seems like the exact solution you're looking for. If all else fails,
you might consider one of the small form-factor PCs (e.g. Shuttle case
with microATX board). They are easy to haul around -- practically as
easy as a laptop -- but still allow PCI cards to be installed.

Pete