Reference Source website down (http://referencesource.microsoft.com/)

Question

The Reference Source website (http://referencesource.microsoft.com/) is not responding to HTTP requests and hasn't been crawled by Google since April 26, 2010 according to the cached pages showing in Google (see http://www.google.com/search?q=site:referencesource.microsoft.com).

Is this website permanently dead?

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Justin Grant

Answer 1

 

That's the best news I've heard for days, I'm just about to throw in the towel trying to get this to work.

I've had all sorts of strange behaviour over the past week. It culminated yesterday when I re-imaged my laptop with XP_Pro SP2/FW 3.5SP1/VS2008 (noSP). It won't return any symbols, never mind source.

I have now tried on my original box, NetMassDowloader, and pointed it at v2.0.50727 assemblies but it returns receive errors on all assemblies. I tried latest downloader (1.6) but same. I then deleted my old cache (which had pdb files but no source) and tried again with VS2008(SP1). It downloaded the pdbs but much smaller than originals, still no source.

No idea what's going on.

 

Answer 2

Hi Guys,

I tried to download the sourcecodes for vs2010 to test the netmassdownloader again, but it seems the whole site is down.

http://referencesource.microsoft.com/ and thx to super ms support on the referencesource stuff, there is nobody caring to answer our questions again.

Please don't make a feature if you can't support it at whole.

Netmassdownloader developer.

Answer 3

Ah, so that's why it's not working. I've been trying for hours, but the procedure for downloading any of the reference source is so complicated I didn't even think that the server might be down.

Why on earth is the reference source not just a simple zip file?

Answer 4

The more I work on this , the less confident I feel.

The real problem seems to be that the assemblies are 'build specific', whatever that means. It seems to mean that any combination of operating system, FCL version, FCL hotfixes, VS hotfixes, UTube videos can affect the version, and therefore nobodies quite sure what they should be downloading. So leave it to MS, only it appears they don't either. DLL 'hellagain'.

We don't know the rules of this game, are all the versions there, or do they retire some at random points?

I've never understood the source file options on (http://referencesource.microsoft.com/) , can't point to specific page as site is down. The list has weird version names (V8???, WPF??) and no mention of XP. Does that mean no XP versions are held there? No explanation on site!

So many questions, so few answers  .. so little time.

What is more, non of the candidate in the UK general election has pledged to fix this if they gain power, that would be a real vote winner!

 

 

Answer 5

Alright, the server's back up! All it took was a Slashdot article.