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

What’s New in vcpkg (July 2024)

This blog post summarizes changes to the vcpkg package manager as part of the 2024.07.12 release, 2024-07-10 tool release, as well as changes to vcpkg documentation throughout July. This month’s release includes some minor changes to output, bug fixes, and documentation improvements. Some stats for this period: vcpkg changelog (2024.07.12 release) The following notable changes were made in this release: Documentation changes If you have any suggestions for our documentation, please submit an issue in...

MSVC Backend Updates in Visual Studio 2022 version 17.10

Visual Studio 2022 17.10 brings new optimizations, intrinsics, features, and improvements to the MSVC backend. Check out the highlights below: Do you want to experience the new improvements in the C++ backend? Please download the latest Visual Studio 2022 and give it a try! Any feedback is welcome. We can be reached via the comments below, Developer Community, X (@VisualC), or email at visualcpp@microsoft.com. Stay tuned for...

Genetec uses Visual Studio, CMake, vcpkg, and Docker for remote Linux C++ development

Over the past couple of months, the Microsoft C++ team reached out to a series of customers voting on a suggestion ticket asking for Remote Linux Unit Testing support to understand their full set of interactions and needs with CMake and remote Linux scenarios in Visual Studio. After these discussions, we built out a backlog of work items to deliver on any pain points in their experiences. One of the customers we interviewed and worked closely with during the process was Georg Zankl, a software developer for Genetec. Georg manages a project that uses dev containers and CMake. Our team helped Georg to bridge the...

Improving GitHub Copilot Completions in VS Code for C++ Developers

GitHub Copilot code completions are autocomplete-stye suggestions that appear inline as you code. Until today, they have used context from your active file and other tabs open in the editor to inform the suggestion that is returned. However, we know that more contextually relevant input leads to better suggestions. Our team has made changes to the C/C++ extension and the GitHub Copilot extension in VS Code to ensure that other relevant C++ context — like available types and methods — are also provided to Copilot completions. When you use the latest version of the C/C++ extension and the GitHub Copilot extensio...

What’s New in vcpkg (June 2024)

This blog post summarizes changes to the vcpkg package manager as part of the 2024.06.15 release, 2024-06-10 tool release, as well as changes to vcpkg documentation throughout June. This month’s release includes some error message improvements and bug fixes. Some stats for this period: vcpkg changelog (2024.06.15 release) The following meaningful changes were made in this release: Documentation changes If you have any suggestions for our documentation, please submit an issue in our GitHub repo or see the box at the ...

Understand your C++ symbols using Copilot in Visual Studio’s Quick Info

Navigating your codebase and forget what exactly that method does? Looking for quick, easy-to-digest information on your code at any point in your development journey? We are excited to announce that now when you hover over symbols in your codebase, you'll have the ability to invoke Copilot conveniently within the Quick Info dialog to learn more about a given symbol and enhance existing or lacking code documentation. How it works Normally, in the Quick info window, you would see comments or xml documentation if it was generated by your team in the code, which can sometimes be unrelated to what the given symb...

Bosch widely adopts Visual Studio 2022 after experiencing performance improvements for C++ Linux cross-compilation

Introduction The Bosch security camera team had been evaluating Visual Studio as a unified development setup for their team’s C++ development, which includes remote Linux C++ development for cross-compiling. While evaluating Visual Studio 2022, the team had a positive experience of using Visual Studio for their C++ development due to notable improvements over the years. Specifically, compared to their experience with Visual Studio 2019, they noticed improvements such as: In Visual Studio 2022, they migrated their project from CMake settings to CMake presets to improve portability between Vi...

Integrating C++ header units into Office using MSVC (3/n)


Overview Introduction In our previous two (part 1, part 2) blog posts we discussed how Office was thinking holistically about header units. In this installment we’d like to share the concrete steps taken to integrate header units into the build of Microsoft Word, and their effect on build throughput. Throughout the post we'll use the term "build throughput" as opposed to "build performance" to avoid potential confusion with application runtime performance. This blog is primarily a recap of the presentation that Zachary gave at Pure Virtual C++ 2024. Remember that precompiled h...

What’s New in vcpkg (May 2024): Dedicated Pages for Each Package on vcpkg.io

This blog post summarizes changes to the vcpkg package manager as part of the 2024.05.24 release as well as changes to vcpkg documentation throughout May. This month’s update also includes individual pages for each package on the vcpkg website as well as several new documentation articles. Some stats for this period: There was no update this month to the vcpkg tool binary itself. However, we have made an important update to our website, vcpkg.io. Individual pages for each port Each one of the 2,434 ports available in the vcpkg open-source registry now has a dedicated page o...