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!

Current state of Visual Studio releases [July 2015]

Hi my blog readers! I know, this blog installment should be out at before 24th July, but there were some exciting news to tell!

This is the fourth installment of Visual Studio releases update. In this installment, the updates are not so much like previous (on May 2015) but it’s very worthy to know!

These are the updates:

• Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2015 RC2 release
• Visual Studio 2013 Update 5 release
• Visual Studio 2015 release

Now let’s talk about those releases!

Visual Studio 2015 RTM

Yes, Visual Studio 2015 has been released on 20th Jluy! I have described the what’s new on Visual Studio 2015 RC on the previous Visual Studio updates, now the RTM add this nice additions:

• New support for high resolution icon for VS extensibility. This means VSX icon will scale nicely on high resolution monitors. There’s also Nuget package of Visual Studio extensibility, so VSX updates are less dependent on the standalone installer of VS SDK (like VS SDK before VS 2015)
• Support for TypeScript 1.5. This also means support for features in ECMA 6, the current standard of Javascript.
• Improved user account management of Visual Studio Online account and Git, also provide switchable profiles. Sweet!
• Improved user account management for Azure AD, including supports for multiple Azure AD
• Diagnostic tool that supports debugging of LLDB, GDB that usually used on GNU compilers. Now this addition requires some deep dive explanation, I’ll try to explain this on separate blog post after this
• Bing powered compiler help. Honestly, I haven’t tried this yet but I’ll try to tell my experience on this later
• … and many more!

More detailed description is available at: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2015/07/20/visual-studio-2015-and-visual-studio-2013-update-5-released.aspx and also specifically at: https://www.visualstudio.com/news/vs2015-vs

Also there are videos to watch at the launch of Visual Studio 2015: https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Visual-Studio/Visual-Studio-2015-Final-Release-Event

I encourage you to check those videos!

Visual Studio 2013 Update 5

Not much is new on this release, but these are the most notable additions:

• support for Team Project renaming, including sync with local workspace. Sweet!
• Additional query token of “current iteration”
• Cloud based load testing. Sweet!! This feature is very worthy to have, as it’s easier to have load test in cloud instead of playing around with on premises load test.

For more information on VS 2013 Update 5, visit VS 2013 Update 5 release notes: https://www.visualstudio.com/news/vs2013-update5-vs

To download VS 2013 Update 5, go here: https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/download-visual-studio-vs

 

Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2015 RC2

Finally, Team Foundation Server 2015 (a.k.a. TFS 2015) is not just feature complete, but it’s nearing RTM release!

From Brian Harry blog post:

Our plan had been that the Release Candidate we shipped at the end of April would be our last public pre-release and that mid-July would be our RTM date.  About a week ago, I made the decision to change the plan.  Instead, we are shipping a “Release Candidate 2” now and will RTM as soon as we are ready after that.

This means TFS 2015 is not released at the same time of Visual Studio 2015 and it’ll be definitely released after Visual Studio 2015 RTM.

One thing for sure is that the support for team project rename is available on this TFS 2015 RC2, and it works the same as in VS 2013 Update 5.

To download TFS 2015 RC2, visit: https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/download-visual-studio-vs

But by the time TFS 2015 RTM released, the download will be replaced by RTM version of TFS 2015.

Current state of Visual Studio releases [May 2015]

Hi my blog readers! I know, this blog installment should be out regularly at 19th or 20th May, but there are many things to be discussed and lots of excitements to be shared for you before I publish this. So please be with me

This is the third installment of Visual Studio releases update. In this installment, again, there are many exciting news about Visual Studio!

Here they are:

1. The release of Visual Studio 2015 Release Candidate (also called Visual Studio 2015 RC) on 29th April 2015
2. The release of Visual Studio 2015 SDK Release Candidate (also called Visual Studio 2015 SDK RC) on 29th April 2015
3. The release of Visual Studio Code (preview)
4. The release of Visual Studio 2013 Update 5 Release Candidate on 28th April 2015
5. Github Extension for Visual Studio 2015 release (it’s also available as an option when installing Visual Studio 2015 RC)

Now here are the breakdown of those above. A friendly warning: this is a loooong list, a little bit TLDR.

Visual Studio 2015 Release Candidate

As usual, if Microsoft releases a software that has RC mark, the RTM release is near: within 3-4 months. Yes, it’s at faster cadence as indicated by my previous blog almost 2 years ago: http://fsharpmonologue.blogspot.com/2013/07/current-state-and-product-lifecycle-of.html

NOTE: This meaning of RC thing may be only apply at Microsoft world and this is common at least in the last 14 years (since Windows XP). In detail, the release of RC means the feature is fixed. This simply means that there will be no new features for the next release for the RTM. The next release of RC can be RC2 or the release, usually (officially) named as RTM, or Release-To-Market.

Even at the release of VS 2010, this trend of faster cadence has stabilized. Yes, there was broken rule of semantic versioning between VS 2012 and 2013, and it was quite annoying. The new version of Visual Studio 2013 should be bringing more features instead of just minor updates and fixes.

Fortunately, Visual Studio 2015 has many good news:

1. It’s not just a new release, it has tons of new features compared to Visual Studio 2013
2. VS 2015 has Roslyn (VB and C# compiler as a service) built in. And it’s also open source!
3. Because of the nature of opening Roslyn, the communities are actively influencing the development of Roslyn and therefore the proposals of features are rapidly introduced and many of them are very good!
4. The Visual Studio 2015 family has different products, but the price will be lower than the previous Visual Studio 2013 with MSDN subscription offers. This also includes the next release of Visual Studio 2013 Community Edition, the Visual Studio 2015 RC Community Edition. There will be NO Visual Studio Premium with MSDN subscription for Visual Studio 2015, as the VS 2015 Premium is named as Visual Studio 2015 Professional. The original VS 2015 Professional offering is now Community Edition.
5. CodeLens is available on Visual Studio 2015 Professional. Originally it was available only at Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate Edition since Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate Edition Update 2.
6. The original Ultimate edition is now available named as Enterprise edition in VS 2015

The official announcement is available at Visual Studio blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2015/04/29/build-2015-news-visual-studio-code-visual-studio-2015-rc-team-foundation-server-2015-rc-visual-studio-2013-update-5.aspx

You can download Visual Studio 2015 RC (Community, Professional, Enterprise) at: https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/visual-studio-2015-downloads-vs

Visual Studio 2015 SDK Release Candidate

This SDK is released at the same time of Visual Studio 2015 Release Candidate. It is also contains the implementation of Roslyn integrated into the way of Visual Studio extension development.

You can also try the samples (included in the SDK) and experiment cool new features of Roslyn, such as building AST of the code (C# and VB only) and analyze your code.

One of the nice features of Visual Studio 2015 is the Light Bulb suggestions when you code using built in managed languages (VB, C#, F#, managed C++) and native C++. Therefore you can also build your own custom Light Bulb suggestions using Visual Studio 2015 SDK. For more information about custom Light Bulb development, visit: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn903708(v=vs.140).aspx

The official announcement of VS 2015 SDK RC is available at the same Visual Studio blog entry above: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2015/04/29/build-2015-news-visual-studio-code-visual-studio-2015-rc-team-foundation-server-2015-rc-visual-studio-2013-update-5.aspx

Visual Studio 2015 SDK RC can be downloaded at: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=46850

Visual Studio Code

A new Visual Studio family is here! It’s very light, free, and cross platform!

Now why I emphasize this? There has been a strong image that Visual Studio will never have lightweight editor that runs on OS other than Windows!

What is Visual Studio Code, really?

It is simply a lightweight development editor but with intelligent features partially borrowed from a full big IDEs such as intellisense, code completion, keyword highlights. It’s based on Omnisharp, a lightweight editor that is also open source. The web development editing part is based on Electron, a subpart of Atom which is also open source. Omnisharp itself is an Atom package that provides C# and ASP.NET support.

At the time of this writing; Visual Studio Code isn’t yet reached RTM. The initial version number is version 0.1.0.

This is the official home page of Visual Studio Code: https://code.visualstudio.com/

One more thing, I have mentioned cross platform! Because Visual Studio Code runs not just on Windows, but it can run on Linux Linux 64-bit, and MacOS.

To download the current Visual Studio Code, you can get it at the landing page (home page) above.

Visual Studio 2013 Update 5 Release Candidate

Yes, you got it right: it’s another update for Visual Studio 2013 after Update 4.

Now what does this Update 5 have? Actually, it’s simply Update 4 with numerous bug fixes and a small additional feature, including these notable bug fixes:

• KB 3018885 FIX: You cannot dismiss developer license notifications in Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 (for Visual Studio IDE)
• Capturing depth buffers on version 9.3 hardware is now supported. This enables support for graphics debugging Unity-based applications that run on Windows Phone.

The additional small features are:

• Team Project rename support for Team Foundation Server (on premises). Visual Studio Online also has this feature.
• A new query token for query iteration: @CurrentIteration (it is case sensitive name). This feature is previously available on Visual Studio Online since March 10. See https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/news/2015-mar-10-vso.aspx

NOTE:

This update is the last release of Visual Studio 2013 update, so there will be no next Visual Studio 2013 Update after Update 5.

Github Extension for Visual Studio 2015

There is support for GitHub built in, not just Git repo support since Visual Studio 2013 initial RTM release. This extension is available as an option when installing VS 2015 or as stand alone installation.

Not just GitHub, but initial feature of pull request, merge, diff, sync, graph is also available.

This is the announcement from official Visual Studio blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2015/04/30/announcing-the-github-extension-for-visual-studio.aspx

The picture below is taken from the blog entry:

To download stand alone installation of this GitHub extension, visit: https://visualstudio.github.com/?CR_CC=200627595

Team Foundation Server 2010, Team Foundation Server 2012 and Team Foundation Service supports OData

Yes! The title means it, literally!

Now we could connect and query Team Foundation Server and Team Foundation Service work items and many more using OData! Using OData means we are using URLs to directly query.

OData quick background

OData has been around and it’s one of the cool openness initiatives from Microsoft. Originally named as Astoria, then WCF Data Service, now it’s called OData.

It’s simply a specification and libraries to produce data to be visible as URL, and also the consumer of the URLs.

The official website for OData is: http://www.odata.org/

In there, you’ll find numerous library supports for many platforms/OS, also as the server (OData producer) and the client (also called OData consumer). These producer and consumer really fits the nature of OData as web services, therefore it can be seen as open web API to access data.

These are current libraries and OS supports:

What about the real customers/users of OData? There are many producers today, and one of them is the famous Nerd Dinner. I call it famous, because it’s often used as samples of OData usages from Microsoft.

There was Netflix, but Netflix has ceased OData support. Here’s the announcement: http://developer.netflix.com/blog/read/Changes_to_the_Public_API_Program

The use of OData in Team Foundation Server and Team Foundation Service

To use OData on both TFS (the server and the service, what have you), we need to have library supports in the form of Nuget package and also tooling support.

The tooling support is available to download at: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39373

I will not dive into the detail of how to set up OData for TFS, as there are resources from Microsoft to have!

To get started, let’s visit this Brian Keller blog entry: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/briankel/archive/2013/01/07/odata-service-for-team-foundation-server-v2.aspx

This is the official Technet Wiki: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/15039.odata-service-for-team-foundation-server-v2.aspx

This is the video explanation from Brian Keller: http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/briankel/OData-Service-for-Team-Foundation-Server-2010

TFS on the cloud has provided simple OData documentation: https://tfsodata.visualstudio.com/

Now, download the “OData Service for Team Foundation Server v2” libraries for Visual Studio at this link: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36230

Then you'll set to have OData for TFS!

In the libraries above, you’ll see OData for TFS in action as Windows Store app:

Enjoy and happy coding!