At Build 2016 we shared a preview of the next version of Visual Studio, which we call Visual Studio “15” (not to be confused with Visual Studio 2015). The download is available here. This is a Preview and is unsupported, so please refrain from installing it on your production environments.
This preview lays a lot of groundwork for vNext, so you may not see a ton of new features. The release notes have the complete list of what’s new in the release, but here are some highlights.
Perhaps the most prominent thing you’ll notice when you go to install this release is that there are two ways to install. With Visual Studio “15”, we are previewing a new lightweight installer that focuses on making installation much faster and less impactful. The smallest installation of Visual Studio with the new installer downloads in less than 300MB, and includes basic code editing support for over 20 languages along with debugging and source code control. You can optionally add support for other features: .NET desktop development with WPF and WinForms, Python, C++ and Unity. It’s a great way to preview new features in the next version of Visual Studio without impacting your production development work.
Since the new installer is a preview, it doesn’t yet have the full set of Visual Studio features. So we’ve kept the “classic” installer for you to preview the other new capabilities in the release. Over time, we will move the full Visual Studio “15” feature set to the new installer.
Regardless of how you install, you should notice the first launch experience is faster – up to 30% faster.
Now, looking at some of the new capabilities in the release, there are few I’d like to call out.
In the language area, the Visual Studio “15” preview includes XAML edit-and-continue for WPF and Universal Windows Apps and new style analyzers for C# and Visual Basic that will help you enforce coding standards.
There are also numerous fixes to the C++ language service, and a preview of a new JavaScript language service. The new JavaScript language service improves IntelliSense, includes IntelliSense for JSDoc comment annotations, and also supports JSX syntax and features like generators and modules from ES2016. This service is not enabled by default but you can enable it by toggling a registry key. For instructions on how to enable the new language service check out the Salsa Documentation on GitHub. Node.js released the latest Node.js Tools 1.2 Alpha which supports Node.js v6.x, has improved support for ES6 IntelliSense engine including support for NPM packages, JsDoc comments, and has fixes in place for increased stability, performance, and improved reliability while debugging. Node.js Tools also support project-less debugging via “Open Folder”.
In the IDE, you can now navigate code bases directly using the “Open Folder” feature, without needing projects and solutions.
In the debugger, we added the ability to add conditions to the debugger configuration so now you can set up your debugger to break or throw exceptions under specific conditions like for specific modules.
This release also updates Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova to support Cordova 6.0.0. TACO also has better NPM integration that will help avoid nearly 30% of the current Cordova build errors that occur due to compatibility issues between Node, NPM, and Cordova. This in turn leads to improved error messaging. TACO also has additional plug-ins.
Tools for Universal Windows App Development includes an updated .NET Native toolchain for Windows 10 apps that has added optimizations to improve runtime performance for managed apps and over 600 bug fixes.
On the analytics front, Application Insights Tools is now Developer Analytics Tools. The primary updates in this version of the tools includes better search features that enable you to easily look back in your search history and enable you to search related telemetry. Additionally, we have streamlined the experience to configure collection of traces from logging frameworks like log4net, NLog, and System.Diagnostics.
The latest Azure SDK 2.9 available with Visual Studio “15” Preview has additional support for secondary App Services and also includes some bug fixes. For details on the download and documentation take a look at Azure Developer Tools page.
In other tooling Visual Studio “15” Preview includes the latest in Office developer tools and SQL Server Data Tools supporting SQL Server 2016 and Azure SQL Database.
For a complete list of what is available in Visual Studio “15” Preview take a look at the Visual Studio “15” Preview Release Notes, and for a list of all bug fixes check out the Known Issues and Fixed Bugs. For information on compatibility check out the page on platform targeting and compatibility.
As always, we welcome your feedback. For problems, let us know via the Report a Problem option in Visual Studio. For suggestions, let us know through UserVoice.
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John Montgomery is the Director of Program Management for Visual Studio, responsible for product design and customer success for all of Visual Studio, C++, C#, VB, JavaScript, and .NET. John has been at Microsoft for 17 years, working in developer technologies the whole time. Reach him on Twitter @JohnMont |
But will this version finally come in a x64 flavor so we can use more than 2GB of memory?
Rico Mariani (who’s not on the VS team) posted a series of articles on the practicalities of this. You can start from this post: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ricom/2015/12/29/revisiting-64-bit-ness-in-visual-studio-and-elsewhere/
So it’s OUR fault that we need 64 bit? We, as developers, just aren’t coding “right”? Is that why I get this warning with the built in, default ASP.NET MVC sample on a machine with 32 GB of RAM on a clean install of Windows 10 + Visual Studio 2015+Update 2 RTM and no other programs running?
http://i.xomf.com/zzqlq.jpg
Here’s another one I just took, after going about some routines – installing WebStorm and running 2 projects with it, and getting nodejs installed and going.
Look, even giving Visual Studio about 2 hours to think, it’s still fighting with about 1GB of Memory. Guess we better get to work rethinking – you know – the built in templates, since they can make it choke.
http://i.xomf.com/vfhwy.jpg
My basic point is that that article is pretty generalized and makes a few very insulting assumptions about programmers in general.
In short VS is so messed up behind the scene that making a 64 bit version is too difficult. Maybe it’s time to start to build a modern IDE instead of patching visual studio 2005
Yeah, a x64 version would be nice. Why 32 bits in 2016?
No command line this release? Tried (in VS15Preview\Common7\Tools\), but it’s broken (ERROR: Cannot determine the location of the VS Common Tools folder.).
nvm I’m dumb and new installer don’t install VS Common Tools, but old installer do and I assume it’s because they are from VS 2015. I guess I’ll try old installer for now.
What ever happened to VS “13”?
VS”13″ was skipped between Visual Studio 2013, which was VS”12″ and Visual Studio 2015, which was VS”14″. I heard that there was a plan for VS”14″ to be Visual Studio 2014, and the last two digits to be synchronised thereafter, but it didn’t happen, and is clearly isn’t going to with this release either.
Probably, VS “13” was seen as “unlucky”. I predict VS “666” to be skipped as well.
Its rollin’ round town with Windows 9…
Dude, I paid this guy $3000 and now my Windows goes to 11.
Still no C# 7 preview though? 🙁
You can play with Binary Literals, Digit Separators, Pattern Matching (2 versions), Local Functions and ref returns in VS15.
Try adding the __DEMO__ compiler symbol – more info on the features is in the Release Notes John mentioned above: https://www.visualstudio.com/news/vs15-preview-vs
Why don’t use the rolling updates model. Switching VS versions is slow and painful and sometimes if a project is stuck to an old version we have to use it forever?
Amen. I think have 5 different versions of Visual Studio installed now.
It is frequently desirable or even necessary (for binary compatibility of native libraries, for example) to be able to use an exact version of the toolchain to produce exactly the result you need. Where you see the burden of being stuck to an old version, I see the great benefit of build reproducibility.
Absolutely. When code is complex and there’s a lot of it, it also runs into compiler bugs occasionally. Having those happen due to automatic updates is intolerable for some kinds of product. It’s impossible for any software not to have new bugs occasionally; they just have to be managed.
And please make Visual Studio more modular. We use C++ for cross-platform development for Windows and consoles. I don’t need all that Visual Basic, JavaScript goodness. And if I want C# I want just it too! When I install a few platform SDKs all of those integrating into VS all that extra unneeded stuff (Visual Basic, JavaScript) becomes a burden.
@Roccoor, the new lightweight installer (http://aka.ms/vsnewinstaller) already supports a C++-only option that enables Desktop Development (for now). We are considering adding more options including one for cross-platform C++ development only. Thanks for the feedback!
Any chance of getting VS to install to a non-system disk *without* ignoring the settings and dumping 8Gb+ on the system disk anyway?
Can the confusing two-numbers versioning be finally dropped? So we all could at least understand which Visual Studio version people talk about? Please?
We’re developers, not Office users. We can live without a year number in our tool title just fine!
Or, alternatively, bump the technical version up to the year. So it will be VS 2015.0, 2016.0, etc. Without old sequential numbers anywhere.
Dropping the year number would be great. Going from “14” CTP to 2014 CTP to 2015 Preview was pretty confusing.
Naming is confusing, it is VS 2017 anyway I bet
How can this not be confused with VS 2015, I thought these products were one in the same? Why name them with the same number. So is this a different version altogether??
I love the idea of the “Open Folder” feature, however, it is pretty much useless without having the ability to specify include directories and preprocessor definitions. Is it possible in the current preview?
Currently I use Qt Creator for exploring large code bases. Qt Creator comes with a tool called qtpromaker that simply creates a project file
that contains all source files of a given (sub)directory just like the new “Open Folder” feature except that it automatically adds every (sub)directory to the include directory list.
@xdopamine, the C++ team is looking into improving the current preview experience for “Open Folder” for C++ source code. Drop me a line at mluparu at microsoft dot com as my team would like to better understand your scenario.
For now, the experience relies on the “Single-file IntelliSense” feature so you can right-click on a file and select “File properties…”. In there, you can customize the include path. We understand that’s not ideal (since the info is stored per-file) and we plan to improve the experience.
How do you get edit and continue working in WPF ?
No UWP app project for now …
UWP needs native SQL Server connection. Not trying to be harsh, but until such time I have no use for metro style apps. I would’ve already made several if not for the lack of database. I have many users that want to walk around their facilities with touchscreen tablets and do this or that, but MS is not helping this situation.
Could not get the edit and continue working in WPF. Is there anything special that needed to be done?
Finally, it’s a good News. I’m very exited because this build n.n
Finally, it’s a good News. I’m very exited because this build n.n
The new MS “15” installer is a joke, if you modify the install everything is uninstalled and redownloaded from scratch!!
I lost on whole day just adding Unity tools!
I guess that’s one of the Kind of Feedback they want, how this Happens, in order to make sure they kan fix these kind of bug’s.
VS 15 Community is just promis. I installed VS “15” , and it seems better ,but for how long. In last year MS just promising .People, for me, you look like lost in the jungle.
Here are 2 thoughts from an intermittent coder.
1 – Since the only language I know well is the old Visual Basic (not current one), why not find a way to update to be more Python like. I know the world runs on C style decedents (C++, C#, Java, ES2016, Objective-C, etc.) but I have always been a fan of more readable code from the old BASIC and FORTRAN.
2 – Make Python a first class language in VS just as C#, VB.Net, C++, F#, and TS/JS.
“…, and includes basic code editing support for over 20 languages”
If I understand this correctly, I prefer to be able to choose only the actual languages I use – not 20.
e.g. I do not use Visual Basic, so I do not want VB at all.
Very nice. Keep up the good work. Loving VS 2015 and looking forward to the new VS ’15’ being just as great. Lots of potential unleashed.
node,npm-cli, bower,gulp cli versions, they are still too old an obsolete, update required
and why in the hell is this still x86 only??
“which we call Visual Studio “15” (not to be confused with Visual Studio 2015)”
This IS confusing – if you take the time to write “not to be confused with…” then you already know that it is confusing. So can someone please explain the naming convention? What is “15”? Is it just a preview release? If so, why is it called “15” when we already have VS 2015? And I thought that CTP was the designation for preview releases, so shouldn’t this be called VS 2016 CTP?
Kevin,
The product name and version number haven’t “lined up” since they started putting year numbers on them, except for one time. The version numbers have been steadily increasing since version 4, except that they skipped 13.
The product named Visual Studio 2005 has a version number of 8.
The product named Visual Studio 2008 has a version number of 9.
The product named Visual Studio 2010 has a version number of 10.
The product named Visual Studio 2012 has a version number of 11.
The product named Visual Studio 2013 has a version number of 12.
The product named Visual Studio 2015 has a version number of 14.
The as-yet-unnamed next version of Visual Studio has a version number of 15.
Maybe this is not the appropriate place for suggestions, but a long-time due feature I miss since a LONG time is a more decent “Web copy” feature in the Web site menu. I realize that there are other ways for deploying, but I publish my code on the internal IIS of a small company since uncountable years that way.
When for any reason the files are out of sync, and the file version on the server is not the one I have edited locally, I have to do boring stuff such as open WinDiff manually, search for folders, and so on. Integrating the WinDiff feature in the Web copy page would take very little coding on your side.
“you can now navigate code bases directly using the “Open Folder” feature”
I’m so emotional right now, I am without words…
Hi,
it’s a good News. I’m very exited because this build
http://www.iransaffrons.com
The Known Issues section mentions:
Issue: Visual Studio “15” Preview expires 14 days after you install it on a computer that has Visual Studio 2015 RTM installed.
Workaround: To work around this issue, install Visual Studio 2015 Update 1 or Update 2, or install Visual Studio “15” Preview on a physical or virtual machine that does not have Visual Studio 2015 RTM installed.
I installed VS 14 Update 2 before installing VS 15, but my license will expire on April 14th anyway. Searching for an updated license fails. Any idea?
It’s working now after I reentered my account credentials (not for the synchronized settings, the other ones).
Interestingly, the C/C++ compiler is the same one as with Visual Studio 2015 Update 1. As in, the same version number, and identical files, according to comp.exe. It thus, naturally, uses the same run-time libraries and so on. This really is a preview, not an early beta.
@John Dallman, as mentioned in our BUILD talk this year https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2016/B880 (slide #56), the plan is to have VS’15’ RTM ship with a highly compatible C++ toolset with VS 2015 (basically with the latest VS 2015 compiler) such that project upgrades will be seamless between the 2 VS versions. PS: The fact that VS’15’ preview didn’t have the VS2015 Update 2 compilers was likely just a release timing issue.
OK, so VS.2015 and VS”15″ are using the same major version of the compiler and run-times. While I appreciate the compatibility problems that this will save, it’s going to create a new level of confusion equal to the one caused by (VS.2010=VC10), (VS.2012=VC11), (VS.2013=VC12).
Please allow installation to location other than “C:\Program Files\…”. Should make it possible to install without administrative privilege as well.
Would be great if we do not need to install the editor/IDE whatever. Command line build tools should suffice.
Cool but please don’t ignore things people are asking for since 3 years. My only real complaint in daily use is this one:
https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio-2015/suggestions/2520134-ability-to-configure-source-control-settings-per-p
Will there be a 64 bit version?
Installing WDK (I tried both 10586 and the 14295 preview) doesn’t add the driver project templates. Help?
We don’t see Lightswitch and Silverlight application in the project template, are they really removed from VS15 preview? Will they be available when it’s RTM?
I would like to know this as well..
Why Visual Studio still not support Per-Monitor DPI scale?
Seriously, we need this!
Is VS going to become touchscreen usable? As a code editor? With larger menu buttons etc?