Enterprise Library 4.0 Plan Published

The Enterprise Library 4.0 plan has finally been published and a summary of the highlights have been published at the link below:

http://www.pnpguidance.net/Post/EnterpriseLibrary4PlanPublishedCodePlex.aspx

To summarize what is coming even further:

• Dependency Injection Block
• Visual Studio 2008 support
• Various other Misc. Changes

The full list includes 12 major stories and 22 low-priority stories. This list can be found on CodePlex at the link below:

http://www.codeplex.com/entlib/Wiki/View.aspx?title=EntLib4%20Backlog

Visual Studio 2008 and Enterprise Library 3.1: IDE Integration

IDE Integration

One relatively minor but very useful feature in Enterprise Library 3.1 is the integration with Visual Studio 2005 IDE (as shown to the left, when you right click on the configuration file)

Since I am now very active with Visual Studio 2008 prototyping/learning I decided to test Enterprise Library 3.1 with the new IDE. Unfortunately after installing Enterprise Library and starting VS 2008 I found the right-click integration missing.

Work Around

As a work around for the missing integration I found that using the "Open With..." feature on any configuration file and then clicking on "Add" button will allow you to select Enterprise Library as one of the options for opening the configuration file.

The one downside to this approach is you will always have to click the "Open With..." button and select Enterprise Library and wont have the nice integration shown in the first screenshot.

What's next?

Now to see if Enterprise Library 3.1 actually works with Visual Studio 2008...