Upgrading from Visual Studio 2013 Preview to Visual Studio 2013 RC!

As developers, last week we had a great surprise coming from Microsoft: Visual Studio 2013 Release Candidate (VS 2013 RC) was publicly released together with Team Foundation Server 2013 RC, .NET Framework 4.5.1 RC, and related developer tools technologies. All the details about what’s new in the VS 2013 RC can be found in this great Soma Segar’s blog entry where you can find detailed information about what’s new in RC and the improvements and additions between VS 2013 Preview and RC release.

One question that’s around the corner is about upgrade-ability story between Preview and RC. Fortunately, there are good news since it is possible to install RC on the same machine as the Preview. The VS 2013 RC installer will handle the upgrade process for you as you can read in the official documentation.

Installing VS 2013 RC

The process for upgrading VS 2013 Preview to VS 2013 RC is quite straightforward:

• First, in your CloudShare environment open your favorite browser and navigate to the Visual Studio product page. Assuming you want to upgrade to VS Ultimate 2013 RC, just click the “Install now” link available under “Visual Studio Ultimate 2013 RC” section.

• In the new web page displayed, press the download button in order to start the download of the VS Ultimate RC bits.

• Once you have downloaded VS Ultimate 2013 RC installer, just execute it to start the installation process. In the first wizard window, agree the “License Terms and Privacy Policy” and press the “Next” button.

• In the next window, select the features you want to install and click “INSTALL” button.

• If everything goes well, the installation process will start and will take some minutes before upgrading your VS Ultimate 2013 Preview to VS Ultimate 2013 RC.

• Once the installation process finishes successfully, you will see a “Setup successful!” windows. Note you’ll need to re-start your computer before starting VS Ultimate 2013 RC.

• Once you have re-started your computer, you can run VS Ultimate 2013 RC and check the new development features are ready to use.

• For instance, you can see there is a new template available to create SharePoint Apps called “Cloud Business App”.

And that’s all about how to upgrade from VS Ultimate 2013 Preview to VS Ultimate 2013 RC in a CloudShare environment. Happy CloudSharing!