JustMock Q3 2013 SP1 is the last version to support integration in Visual Studio 2008 and installation on XP/2003

When the Visual Studio release cycle speeded up to an annual one and with the pending end-of-life of XP, we had to evaluate our goals and resources. We are very dedicated to the product and we want to continue adding new features and making JustMock work with every new version of Windows and Visual Studio. But supporting legacy versions of both will make us deliver these new features not as quickly as you’d like. That’s why, we decided to end our support for the least used platforms. We asked around, checked the statistics, and at the end, Windows XP, Windows 2003 and Visual Studio 2008 did not make it. Our upcoming service pack will be the last one which officially supports these platforms.

The FAQ:

Q: What does “integration in Visual Studio” mean?

A: Visual Studio up to version 2008 uses the so-called “add-ins” to allow extension. Since version 2010, it switched to “extensions”, which provide much larger API calls for us. We retire our add-in only.

Q: When will the change become effective?

A: In the Q1 2014 release, currently scheduled for February 2014. Note, that from time to time we are releasing so called Internal Builds.

Q: Does this mean that we drop .net 3.5, which was the framework version of VS 2008?

A: No! You can continue targeting .net 3.5 in your unit tests. But you need to run them in Visual Studio 2010 or newer.

Q: What about the actual mocking engine?

A: The mocking code is contained in telerik.justmock.dll. It is available and you will be able to update your existing projects with its new versions. But if you are using Visual Studio 2008, you won’t be able to interactively turn on and off the profiler when you use elevated mocking from within Visual Studio 2008.

Q: telerik.justmock.visualbasic.dll assembly is gone. What should I do?

A: This assembly contains specific code for supporting Visual Basic in VS 2008. You will need to port your tests to use the mocking API in Telerik.JustMock.dll instead.

Q: What about the F1 Help?

A: It is gone for good. Please use the online help instead.

Q: How are my CI builds affected?

A: They are not affected. JustMockRunner.exe and our MSBuild and TFSBuild integration modules continue to work.

Q: Is there a policy which versions of Visual Studio are supported?

A: We strive to support the current and the 2 previous versions of VS. Currently, these are VS 2010, 2012 and 2013. If there are no radical changes in Visual Studio APIs (for example, switching from add-in to extension APIs), we will give our best effort to support older versions as well.