Current state of Visual Studio releases [March 2016]

Hi there, my blog readers!

I’m back to regular updates of giving what happened in Visual Studio world from February 2016 to the end of March 2016. It’s a bit late (31st March) as there are exciting news!

There were interesting news, including the update of Visual Studio, .NET Core, ASP.NET Core, the shocking nice update: Microsoft acquired Xamarin!

These are the updates from February 2016 to the end of March 2016:

1. Microsoft acquired Xamarin! – February 25, it was discussed by Scott Gu in his blog entry, also in Xamarin’s blog, as well as others from Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, etc.
2. Visual Studio TFS 2015 Update 2 goes RTM!– March 30, 2016, – complete TFS 2015 Update 2 description is available at the official VS TFS 2015 Update 2
3. Visual Studio 2015 Update 2 goes RTM! – March 30, 2016, – complete Update 2 description is available at the official Visual Studio release note page
4. Microsoft joins Eclipse Foundation, as described in Brian Harry’s blog and in Visual Studio’s blog.
5. Visual Studio 2005’s end of support announcement – March 11, 2016 – The official end of date is April 12th, 2016 but it is announced on this Visual Studio blog

These updates are cool! Especially on Xamarin’s acquisition and VS 2015 and TFS 2015 Update 2 releases.

Microsoft acquired Xamarin

Yes, Microsoft acquired Xamarin! Now Miguel de Icaza joins Microsoft as part of Microsoft developers. All of the Xamarin employees are part of Microsoft as well.

For more details, please read Microsoft official announcement in Scott Gu’s blog entry.

We are going to have Microsoft Xamarin Studio? Or new name? This is interesting!

Visual Studio 2015 Update 2 RTM

Yes, we have Update 2 RTM! To me, the most noteworthy notes in this Update 2 release are:

1. Git indicator of committed changes that not yet pushed and uncommitted local changes
2. Git submodule update is now available when submodule has to be refreshed for update
3. Add support for these Git commands: reset –-hard, cherry picking, and staging)
4. Typescript is updated to TypeScript 1.8

And many more! Again, check the complete list of new features and bug fixes at: https://www.visualstudio.com/news/vs2015-update2-vs

For #1, we can have Git indicator on the status bar below:

This is small new features but it’s very useful to see the number of changes and number of committed changes that is not yet pushed. It might be unnoticed, but this indicator can be clicked. Clicking the “pencil” icon will display the changes page if there’s committed changes. Clicking the “up arrow” will go to the Synchronization page.

These are the new supported Git commands in the Update 2:

The nice thing is the Cherry-Pick support, and I’m going to use this Cherry-Pick often!

Visual Studio TFS 2015 Update 2 RTM

This update is also very good update for TFS 2015 (on premise version of Visual Studio Team Services).

The notable features are:

1. Creating and deleting team project is now available from the web interface
2. Work items now can be deleted!
3. Team Foundation Server extensions!
4. Create new branch from bugs in Kanban board (new linking capabilities)

For more complete list of new features, changes, and bug fixes, please visit: https://www.visualstudio.com/news/tfs2015-update2-vs

Next blog entry will discuss the implications of Xamarin after acquired by Microsoft!