C++ Team Blog

The latest in C++, Visual Studio, VS Code, and vcpkg from the MSFT C++ team

Microsoft C++ Team at CppCon 2023

September 28, 2023 Sep 28, 2023 09/28/23
Sy Brand
As always our team will be at CppCon this year with a host of presentations. Many of us will also be present at our team’s booth in the main hall for the first two days of the conference. Come say hi and let us know if you have any questions about our talks, products, or anything else! You can also join the #visual_studio channel on the ...

MSVC ARM64 Optimizations in Visual Studio 2022 17.7

September 28, 2023 Sep 28, 2023 09/28/23
Hongyon Suauthai (ARM)
In Visual Studio 2022 version 17.6 we added a host of new ARM64 optimizations. In this 2nd edition of our blog, we will highlight some of the performance improvements to MSVC ARM64 compiler backend, we will discuss key optimizations in the Visual Studio 2022 version 17.7 for both scalar ISA and SIMD ISA (NEON). We started introducing these ...

C11 Threads in Visual Studio 2022 version 17.8 Preview 2

September 26, 2023 Sep 26, 2023 09/26/23
Charlie Barto
Back in Visual Studio 2022 version 17.5 Microsoft Visual C gained preliminary support for C11 atomics. We are happy to announce that support for the other major concurrency feature of C11, threads, is available in Visual Studio version 17.8 Preview 2. This should make it easier to port cross-platform C applications to Windows, without having ...

MSVC Machine-Independent Optimizations in Visual Studio 2022 17.7

September 25, 2023 Sep 25, 2023 09/25/23
Troy Johnson
This blog post presents a selection of machine-independent optimizations that were added between Visual Studio versions 17.4 (released November 8, 2022) and 17.7 P3 (released July 11, 2023). Each optimization below shows assembly code for both X64 and ARM64 to show the machine-independent nature of the optimization. Optimizing Memory Across ...

Enhancing the CMake Targets View in Visual Studio

September 20, 2023 Sep 20, 2023 09/20/23
Sinem Akinci
The CMake Targets View in Visual Studio is a view that allows you to visualize your CMake project structure by the CMake targets and build specified target libraries and executables. To make this view more usable, we have implemented a few new improvements to make it easier than ever to navigate your CMake targets. This includes improved ...

What’s New for the Remote File Explorer in Visual Studio

September 18, 2023 Sep 18, 2023 09/18/23
Sinem Akinci
The Remote File Explorer gives you the capability to access your files and folders on your remote machines that you are connected to through the Connection Manager in Visual Studio, without having to leave the IDE. Since we last spoke, the team has implemented new features to further enhance your remote file workflows by listening to your ...

Make Member Function const and Global Function Static in Visual Studio

September 14, 2023 Sep 14, 2023 09/14/23
Mryam Girmay
We are delighted to announce that Visual Studio Preview now includes the "Make Member Function Const" and "Make Global Function Static" features. To check out these features, make sure you update to the latest version of Visual Studio Preview.  Make Member Function Const Visual Studio now generates hints to mark member functions as ...

MSVC Address Sanitizer – One DLL for all Runtime Configurations

August 10, 2023 Aug 10, 2023 08/10/23
Amy Wishnousky
With Visual Studio 2022 version 17.7 Preview 3, we have refactored the MSVC Address Sanitizer (ASan) to depend on one runtime DLL regardless of the runtime configuration. This simplifies project onboarding and supports more scenarios, particularly for projects statically linked (/MT, /MTd) to the C Runtimes. However, static configurations have...

Introducing CMake Debugger in VS Code: Debug your CMake Scripts using Open-Source CMake Debugger

August 9, 2023 Aug 9, 2023 08/9/23
Sinem Akinci
The new CMake Debugger that was introduced in Visual Studio is now available in VS Code. Now, you can debug your CMakeLists.txt scripts from VS Code using the CMake Tools Extension. To see the full release notes for this release and what else is included, including bug fixes, please see the release notes. Background The Visual C++ team ...