[IronPython] Python Tools for Visual Studio now accepting contributions

[Dino Viehland]

Jeff wrote:
> The IronPython Tools (or "old" tools) are the original VS integration tools,
> developed when IronPython was still funded by MS. PTVS is a new set of
> Python (not IronPython-specific; they support CPython and IronPython, and
> some Jython and PyPy) tools Dino's working on for MS's Technical Computing
> group. Some of the features are HPC-specific (like MPI cluster debugging)
> but for the most part it's just a nice Python environment, and a lot more
> stable than the old tools.
> 
> Dino, can the HPC stuff be split out for people who don't need it?

Not only can it be split out, it already is!  :) It's in its own VS package already and
when you install it's an optional component.  That's basically a necessity because
it depends upon the HPC SDK which we don't want to require everyone to have.
It does mean if you're doing development on PTVS that you need to have the
VS SDK installed or unload that project from the solution.

> 
> PTVS is significantly better then the old tools and is also under active
> development, and now that they're accepting contributions it makes sense
> to me to retire the old tools and just get people to download PTVS (I doubt
> we'll bundle them, but instead have a big link next on the download page).