Starting with Visual Studio 2026, we are introducing a new support lifecycle for the Microsoft C++ (MSVC) Build Tools. We are also updating the MSVC release cadence. As Visual Studio moves to a Modern Lifecycle with monthly feature updates and an annual new version, decoupling the compiler from the IDE offers you the best of both worlds – rapid ...

Visual Studio Build Tools (VSBT) can now be used for compiling open-source C++ dependencies from source without requiring a Visual Studio license, even when you are working for an enterprise on a commercial or closed-source project. This change expands user rights to the Build Tools and does not limit the existing Visual Studio Community license...

CMake is now 20! Kitware posted yesterday an interview with Bill Hoffman, the original creator for CMake and shared that August 31 was CMake's 20th birthday Here, in the C++ team, we are not only heavy CMake users. We also believe that CMake is a foundational piece for all C++ cross-platform developers and, as such, we strive to enable the best ...

We're excited to echo Microsoft Security team's announcement that Project OneFuzz is now available as an open-source project in GitHub. To learn more about the announcement, head over to our Microsoft Security blog to read "Microsoft announces new Project OneFuzz framework, an open source developer tool to find and fix bugs at scale". From the a...

We are looking forward to this week's main event, Microsoft Build 2020. Build 2020 starts tomorrow Tuesday, May 19 and will run for 48 continuous hours as a digital-only event that is open to anyway around the world, at no cost. This is the first major tech conference to go full-digital with an experience designed from the ground-up for a virtual a...

Find All References, Rename Symbol refactoring, support for localization, new navigation breadcrumb controls, and improvements to the Outline view are only a few of the improvements in the November 2019 update of Visual Studio Code C++ extension.

Visual Studio 2019 pushes the boundaries of individual and team productivity. We hope that you will find these new capabilities compelling and start your upgrade to Visual Studio 2019 soon. As you are considering this upgrade, rest assured that Visual Studio 2019 makes it distinctively easy to move your codebase from previous versions of Visual ...

The October 2018 update of the Visual Studio Code C++ extension has recently shipped. It comes with a ton of bug fixes, improved Go to Definition support, integrated terminal support when debugging, and a simpler way to opt into our extension’s Insiders program. For a detailed list of this release’s improvements, check out the release notes. Go to...

This post is part of a regular series of posts where the C++ product team here at Microsoft and other guests answer questions we have received from customers. The questions can be about anything C++ related: MSVC toolset, the standard language and library, the C++ standards committee, isocpp.org, CppCon, etc. Today’s post is by Marian Luparu. C+...

In Visual Studio 2017 release 15.8 Preview 3 we’re announcing support for Just My Code stepping for C++. In addition to previously supported callstack filtering, the Visual Studio debugger now also supports stepping over non-user-code. As you “Step In”, for example in an algorithm from the Standard library with a custom predicate or in a Win32 API ...