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I work on an air-gapped development network. Every year or so, I go out and spend a week or so on an internet connected machine and download Visual Studio and Android Studio and all the bits and pieces required for those products and the libraries they want to download to support our projects. Copy all that onto DVDs and transfer it to the air-gap and setup some scripts to install it all. Yes, it is a colossal PITA but it's what I've got to do for my work environment. VS has been getting worse each release as Microsoft ignores their offline developers more and more. If you need all those damn NuGet packages to do the most basic development actions like unit tests, include the *&(^# things in the offline packages! ... Okay, rant over.
Android Studio hasn't gotten worse, its process has been the same for years now ... run it online then bundle up the repository cache and take that offline.
I'm getting ready to do the big nasty for this year, and my question deals with Visual Studio. Currently, we have 2019 (with about half the major components), on the air-gap network with all current patches applied. I'm soliciting opinions on:
- how much more does 2022 want to access the internet in its normal course of operations, once you have all components for your project on the local machine? For reference, 2019 works fine with no delays trying to access the internet to do "other stuff" or look for updates or phone home.
- is it worth it to upgrade to 2022?
We have a suite of .NET Framework 4.7.2 WinForms applications, along with both C and C++ programs. No web and no database ... although I can see some small local DB stuff coming. This questions only applies if we stick with NET Framework. We're thinking about migrating to .NET 7 (whatever the current version is), which will force us to upgrade and render this question moot.
- how easy is it to set up a local NuGet server with just those packages put out by Microsoft, and maybe a few other select sources?
We are excessively paranoid about third party stuff here, so don't really use much that we can't get the source for and compile ourselves, so I'm not talking all those random open source packages that are out there. Yes, I know MS isn't qualitatively better, but my overlords are much happier if I can point to them, or some other recognized corporate purveyor of SW tools, as the source of a binary.
Data is transferred the old fashioned sneaker-net way, using DVDs. Having 10s of them is not a problem, but having 100s is.
Also, don't suggest creating a VM on the internet side and then transferring that VM to the air-gap side. This one is a NO for non-negotiable reasons; please don't ask what they are and don't try to argue why this should be an option.
Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors - and miss.
Lazarus Long, "Time Enough For Love" by Robert A. Heinlein
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Quote: Having 10s of them is not a problem, but having 100s is.
How is about a USB- SSD drive? 4TB for about $250.
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Corporate policy matches the standard for any air-gapped network: no removable writable media. The DVD sessions are closed, therefore not writable, before being used in the air-gap system.
Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors - and miss.
Lazarus Long, "Time Enough For Love" by Robert A. Heinlein
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Can you do Blu-Ray? They can hold up to 50GB on a double layer disk.
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You're not gonna like my thoughts, so feel free to skip this altogether. I understand what I'm about to write is a non-starter for you. My intent is not to rock the boat. And I fully realize none of this helps you in your current situation.
My thinking is, if a dev machine absolutely, positively, by design, has to be air-gapped, then from the get-go, something's very wrong with the picture.
I absolutely understand the need to air-gap things. But you don't develop/test against real servers with real data, you do all of that with a lab you can take down/rebuild on-demand. Externalize your connection configuration. User accounts shouldn't lead to valuable data. Work with made-up data. If that gets breached? There should be nothing of value lost.
I say this with all due respect. I understand you don't necessarily have a say in this. All I'm pointing out is that things are being made unnecessarily complicated for you because someone along the chain is making bad decisions. Why does a dev box need to be kept isolated from the rest of the world?
All that being said - sometimes you lose your live internet connection for reasons outside your control, and VS (2022 especially) has become awful at managing connected/disconnected states, but that's a rant for another day. If you can stick with VS2019 and it's working well for you...stick with it. My offline experience with VS2022 hasn't been a positive one.
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That may work if the data is the protected IP. What happens if the algorithm is the protected IP? In this case, air-gapping the developer's platforms is the only sure way to protect the IP.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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The word "patent" comes to mind. But I can't imagine that, in the real world, it's all that effective at protecting said IP, but at the same time, I can't imagine that even the largest software companies today working on the most secretive stuff go completely offline. Lots of security checks, everything being monitored 24/7 in an automated fashion, sure, but completely offline? Maybe a few small labs here and there, and that's it...
But then, I've never really had the exposure to that sort of thing, so who am I to speculate...
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I would think that in certain defence-oriented organizations, all IP is secured in an air-gapped network. Every developer would have two platforms, one connected to the Internet and the other connected to the air-gapped network.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Thanks for your experience with 2022 working offline. If we decide to migrate to the new NET, we're going to have to upgrade to 2022. Unless someone knows a way to make 2019 support .NET 7. If 2022 is that unreasonable about working offline, that becomes a con in the debate about migrating. I'll be doing some experimenting with that when I'm out in internet land.
As for the rest -- given your underlying assumptions (which you can deduce, based on your post), your comments are correct in every manner, and I agree with them. But ... you knew there was a but coming  ... in my case, those assumptions are not correct and the development environment is absolutely correct for what I work on.
Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors - and miss.
Lazarus Long, "Time Enough For Love" by Robert A. Heinlein
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I can only speculate, and you don't owe me any explanation or need to elaborate. I'm sure it can all be justified. All I can say is good luck, and I hope you're well compensated for the extra hoops you're being made to jump through.
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Daniel had it in one guess.
Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors - and miss.
Lazarus Long, "Time Enough For Love" by Robert A. Heinlein
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I'm opinionated, but in my defense, never made the claim to know it all.
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I would suggest skipping. Net 7, and wait for. Net 8 which will be out in a few weeks. .Net 8 is a long term support (LTS) version and Microsoft will provide security patches for a longer period of time than. Net 7
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VS 2022 does a check for package updates normally. It is very easy to set up local nuget_repo on either an internal server or local directory on dev PC. Nexus operates as a proxy service for nuget but probably a lot faster and easier to build your own proxy service copy from "public" sources to local machine.
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I think where you are going in the wrong direction is to think that an "air-gapped dev system" is something bad, there "there is something wrong with that picture".
There are plenty of applications that work completely without the need for the Internet, for very valid reasons.
I did for example a few years back a data conversion job for a large nationwide client in the healthcare business. I actually had to work the other way around, I wrote and updated the conversion software on my own laptop, with no connection to the hospital's infrastructure (bar electricity). Initial test data was screened and anonymized before I got this on my computer. There was never one bit of live data on my system. And program changes were also transferred to the actual computer performing the conversion via read-only media. This way no patient data could possibly get out this way. Yes, a bit cumbersome, but workable.
And not that I really needed to Internet for any development, as the IDE/compiler/libraries work very nicely self-contained (it wasn't a Microsoft product).
I think it is an absolute fallacy these days that so many people think that everything is "in the cloud", "needs to be connected to the Internet". Beside that in some businesses, the air-gap exists is so that no data gets out of the environment. Hence for example the read-only media (DVD) that the OP mentioned.
And no, you ABSOLUTELY do not, NEVER, develop with any live data. NEVER EVER!
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Ralf Quint wrote: I think where you are going in the wrong direction is to think that an "air-gapped dev system" is something bad, there "there is something wrong with that picture".
It's not that I think it's "wrong", it's that based on my experience with MS's development tools, they make your life kinda miserable if you are offline.
Ralf Quint wrote: I think it is an absolute fallacy these days that so many people think that everything is "in the cloud", "needs to be connected to the Internet".
I hope I didn't give the wrong impression--I'm entirely with you. I have a slow internet connection here at home, and I'm the guy who still, to this day, will always raise his hand and ask "how well will this work for those who are offline"...I despise products that assume you'll always be connected. I despise products that assume they'll be running on the fastest CPU with tons of memory and disk/network latency isn't a consideration, and they'll be the only products running on a system.
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Well, this is one (of several) reasons why I do not use any MS development tools. Microsoft has completely lost touch with reality, and unfortunately, a lot of people just keep following anyway, like the lemmings...
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Name one equivalent to VS - despite all its flaws.
I don't think anyone's being a lemming.
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Define "equivalent to VS". And all the people that think that everything has to be on .NET and/or use VS, yes, they are lemmings. Or at least blind horses with blinders on.
I do all my development for years now (kind of always have) in Object Pascal and the Lazarus IDE (Delphi before that), which runs identically on Windows, Linux, macOS and then some.
Much less cruft than it comes with VS (or Eclipse, <shudder>), much more straight forward and much faster...
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Yeah, you're new around here and don't know much about the types of developers that hang around here...
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New around here? Nope, not really.
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Barely over a year, yes, you're new.
The old timers around here tend to agree - this has been discussed many, many times over. As much as most hate VS, there's really no good replacement for it.
And I think you'll find that most developers here focus on Windows and .NET - specifically, C#. And they don't make the mistake of comparing apples with oranges.
Calling that bunch "lemmings" will make you rather unpopular, rather quickly around these parts.
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dandy72 wrote: Barely over a year, yes, you're new.
Well, not sure where you got that info from, but you are certainly wrong. It's more likely around 7 or 8 years.
But anyway, if having a different opinion (and practical experience) isn't appreciated by some, oh well, so be it...
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Ralf Quint wrote: Well, not sure where you got that info from, but you are certainly wrong. It's more likely around 7 or 8 years.
Have you changed profiles? Because yours says you've only been on since June 22 of last year.
Ralf Quint wrote: if having a different opinion (and practical experience) isn't appreciated by some, oh well, so be it..
It's not "having different opinion" that gets me, it's someone showing up on a very-much Windows/C#/.NET developer-centric web site, and calling VS users lemmings.
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dandy72 wrote: Have you changed profiles? Because yours says you've only been on since June 22 of last year.
The oldest email from the CodeProject's "Daily News" here in my email folder is actually from 08/20/2009. I think I changed the email address once, but even that is several years ago, that's probably the 7 or 8 years that I mentioned before...
dandy72 wrote: It's not "having different opinion" that gets me, it's someone showing up on a very-much Windows/C#/.NET developer-centric web site, and calling VS users lemmings.
Please go back and see what the OP of this thread is about, programming offline. And that is something that VS is simply unsuited for. If someone insists on using it anyway, because that's the only tool (s)he knows, then I would consider the comparison to lemmings fitting...
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