Limitations of Visual Studio 2012 Express Desktop

Question

I'm in the process of deciding whether or not to use Visual Studio 2012 Express for Desktop or purchase a retail copy of Visual Studio 2012 Professional for my desktop program. The program is built using C# though portions of it may include F#.

From what I've gathered so far, the express edition supports NuGet, Unit Testing, and Code Analysis. It mentions a subset of Code Analysis rules are used but I'm unsure how they compare to the professional edition as well as FxCop/StyleCop.

I'm assuming the express edition lacks extension support but the only extension I really cared about was NuGet. I also assume it doesn't include a TFS CAL despite having the ability to connect to TFS. This again isn't an issue as I'm using Perforce for source control. I also understand that this version is limited to desktop style applications only, but have so far only seen mention C++ and C#. Does it support F#?

Can someone clue me in as to any other limitations of 2012 Express for Desktop? Are there any license limitations for developing a commercial application?

In the past, MS included express editions as part of their version comparison. But when they updated their site for 2012, they separated out the express editions and offer little to no detail.

Answer 1

There are few limitation I can gather : First of all there are different IDE's for different use

• Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web.
• Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows 8
• Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop.
• Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Express 2012

Express editions of the IDE omit the following features included in the Professional editions

• Multi-unit testing framework and refactoring support

• Static code analysis, profiling, and HLSL editing and debugging

• Third-party extensibility support (though the Extension Manager feature is still present)

• OpenMP support

But there are few positives I explore in 2012 : Unlike previous version

• Solution is allowed, you can create multiple projects in a single solutions.
• 64bit compilations support is there.

If working in single or less than 5 person team, express is the way to go. It definitely bring much more new and unlock features than it predecessors.

Answer 2

"Productivity Power Tools 2012" cannot be installed on VS2012 Express edition, hence such features like "Entity Framework Reverse Engineer Code First" won't be available, which is critical to migrate existing apps's DB into Model's classes.

Answer 3

Portable Class Libraries are not supported in express versions. (You can reference PCL dlls, you just can't work with PCL projects.)

Answer 4

As you receive a product key if you register I think it confirms that you then are free to use VS 2012 Express as you like.

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/downloads#d-2010-express say:

"After installation, you can try this product for up to 30 days. You must register to obtain a free product key for ongoing use after 30 days."

Answer 5

F# is available for VS Express 2012 for Web

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/fsharpteam/archive/2012/09/12/announcing-the-release-of-f-tools-for-visual-studio-express-2012-for-web.aspx

Looks like NuGet worked with VS 2010 Express Web so I would expect it to work with 2012

http://docs.nuget.org/docs/start-here/nuget-faq

Professional gives you a lot of the profiling and static analysis tools. I couldn't find out how the FxCop rules differ.