Visual Studio Blog

The official source of product insight from the Visual Studio Engineering Team

Visual Studio Managed Multi-Targeting: Part 1: Concepts: Target Framework Moniker, Target Framework

May 19, 2010 May 19, 2010 05/19/10
Visual Studio Blog
In prior versions of Visual Studio, before Visual Studio 2010, the projects could only target .NET Framework versions v2.0, v3.0 and v3.5 therefore it was, mostly, sufficient to identify a framework only with its version. This is changing with Visual Studio 2010 – now projects will be able to target not only current versions of the .NET ...

A guide to .vcxproj and .props file structure

May 14, 2010 May 14, 2010 05/14/10
Visual Studio Blog
If you inspect the contents of a .vcxproj file (the new VC++ project file format in VS2010) in notepad or in VS editor (by first unloading the project and then choosing "Edit Foo.vcxproj" from the context menu in Solution Explorer), you will see that the various top-level MSBuild elements are laid out in a particular order. Go ahead and open...

Announcing: Collapse Selection in Solution Explorer extension

May 13, 2010 May 13, 2010 05/13/10
Visual Studio Blog
We have received much feedback asking for a feature that would recursively collapse nodes in the solution explorer. We are happy to announce the Collapse Selection in Solution Explorer extension! What is the Collapse Selection in Solution Explorer extension? Many Visual Studio users have a solution tree structure with multiple projects and ...

How to create a great online project template (or how to make applications that speak)

May 13, 2010 May 13, 2010 05/13/10
Visual Studio Blog
Like the project templates installed with Visual Studio, online project templates enable people to easily start creating various applications. It’s not just Microsoft that creates these templates -- anyone can create an online template and publish it at the Visual Studio Gallery.  Once it’s published, developers can access online project ...

If you are seeing intermittent crashes with VS 2010

May 10, 2010 May 10, 2010 05/10/10
Visual Studio Blog
Some customers have been reporting intermittent crashes while using Visual Studio 2010, particularly during file save and build. We haven’t tracked this down completely yet, but many of the crashes seem to be related to an out-of-date version of the AnkhSVN extension. The newest release (2.1.8420 – note correction – 8400 did ...

Building on Cross targeting scenarios and 64-bit MSBuild

May 7, 2010 May 7, 2010 05/7/10
Visual Studio Blog
UPDATE: Most issues around MSBuild support for cross-bitness and 64-bit builds are fixed in .NET 4.5. As always, feedback is welcome! Please leave your comments in this blog post and report any bugs on Microsoft Connect.   During the Visual Studio 2010 development cycle a push to make the build experience better on Cross compilation...

Open thread: Extensibility is the future?

May 6, 2010 May 6, 2010 05/6/10
Visual Studio Blog
With the release of Visual Studio 2010 came a major improvement to the overall extensibility story of Visual Studio; the new editor. With the new editor VS was introduced to a Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) based API that opened up possibilities you could barely dream of in previous versions of VS. Inside of the editor you’re able...