Installing IronPython Studio

I finally got Visual Studio 2008 installed yesterday and thought I'd celebrate by looking at IronPython integration into VS. I started typing "IronPython" into Firefox's Search Bar and "IronPython Studio" came up as a suggestion. It turns out that IronPython Studi0 (IPS) is built on top of the Visual Studio 2008 Shell, something Josh Holmes, if I recall correctly, had mentioned to me in a conversation quite a while ago. Though an additional stand-alone application wasn't what I intended, a webcast at the IPS CodePlex site was enough to convince me to try it out.

According to a January 16 post from the VSX Team Blog, you do not need any version of Visual Studio installed to run the latest version of IPS. The only prerequisite is the Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Shell (isolated mode) Redistributable Package and the "1MB IronPython Setup installation" (which is really just a zip file that you extract into C:\IronPython). Installation was a snap for me, though I wasn't exactly the best test case for this since I already had VS2008 and the VS2008 SDK installed.

When you launch the IronPython.msi, the IPS Installation Instructions suggest you do so from a command prompt with Administrative Privileges. Also, you may find the IronPython Studio Discussions List at CodePlex a valuable resource both during and after installation.