In the next version of its developer-tool suite, Visual Studio 2010, Microsoft plans to include the ability to record the full screens of what testers are seeing, as well as data about their machine.
When a test application crashes, the technology will enable developers to see the bug as it occurred.
In an interview last week, Dave Mendlen, director in Microsoft's Developer Division, said the feature is designed to avoid the all-too-frequent conflict that occurs when a software tester finds a bug that the developer says can't be reproduced. Internally, the feature has been called 'TiVo for debuggers'.
Although the feature is initially only aimed at in-house testers, a similar feature could one day find its way into broader testing and potentially even into Microsoft beta products.
"I wouldn't be surprised at all to see this become a way that we do beta management," Mendlen said.
Microsoft offered few other details about Visual Studio 2010 and the .Net Framework 4.0. However, it is a fairly safe bet that better support for cloud-based services will be included. "That is certainly an area that Visual Studio and the .Net Framework will have to address," Mendlen said. "As we enable service-based technologies, of course we will have to tool it."
The company also talked about modelling tools that will make it easier for new programmers in a team to get a sense of how earlier versions of software work.
One of the other goals is to add more business-intelligence tools — dashboards, for example — that enable project managers to assess whether a development project is on track. "The guys that are paying the bills often get very little info," Mendlen said.
Mendlen said Visual Studio 2010 is expected to ship in fiscal year 2010. "I can tell you it won't ship in 2011," he said.
The software giant is not the only company looking to transfer the TiVo notion to software development. A company called Replay Solutions launched a similar product in June for enterprise Java applications.
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates talked about adding a 'black box' feature to Windows (without the video-recording ability) in 2005. Microsoft later said it wasn't broadly expanding the Watson error-reporting capabilities beyond the kinds of data it already had been collecting. It never became totally clear what Gates was referring to.
A Microsoft representative did say: "The two technologies are not related and, in Visual Studio Team System, the black box is only on testers' machines and only turned on when the tester decides it should be turned on."
