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Visual Studio news feed
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Visual Studio 2022 Launch videos available on-demand
Visual Studio 2022 Launch videos are now available on-demand. Catch up and learn all about the new release.
Visual Studio 2022 is now available
We’ve reached general availability for Visual Studio 2022 and .NET 6, both of which are now available for download. Visual Studio 2022 will help you go from idea to code faster than ever. Developer productivity and quality-of-life improvements are at the heart of Visual Studio 2022, and we’re excited for you to try it out. Simply put, Visual Studio 2022 will let you bring your ideas to life.
Announcing .NET 6 – The Fastest .NET Yet
.NET 6 is now available. It is easier to use, runs faster, and has many new features.
Join us November 8 for the Launch of Visual Studio 2022
On behalf of our entire team, we are excited to announce the upcoming release of Visual Studio 2022 on November 8, and the immediate availability of the Visual Studio 2022 Release Candidate (RC). We invite you to explore the latest capabilities of Visual Studio 2022 at our virtual launch event on November 8.
Visual Studio 2022 Preview 4 is now available
We are excited to announce the fourth preview release of Visual Studio 2022! With Preview 4, there are more new capabilities on the themes of personal and team productivity, modern development, and constant innovation. In this blog, we’re highlighting a few of the new capabilities of Visual Studio 2022 Preview 4. We’d love for you to download it, try it out, and join us in shaping the next major release of Visual Studio with your feedback.
Announcing .NET 6 Release Candidate 1
We are happy to release .NET 6 Release Candidate 1. It is the first of two “go live” release candidate releases that are supported in production. For the last month or so, the team has been focused exclusively on quality improvements that resolve functional or performance issues in new features or regressions in existing ones
Boost your productivity with Productivity Power Tools Extensions in Visual Studio 2022
Visual Studio 2022 is here and is more customizable than ever. However, that experience may not be complete without the essential extensions you know and love. As existing extensions continue to be migrated, we’re excited to announce that one of the most popular and anticipated sets of extensions is now available to download today: Productivity Power Tools for Visual Studio 2022!
The Future of Visual Studio Extensibility is Here
Visual Studio 2022 seeks to greatly improve your overall development experience, and we’re moving forward with that journey in improving VS extension writing and usage today! We have several exciting extensibility updates that are either available now or on the horizon, so let’s check them out!
Visual Studio 2022 Preview 3 now available!
We are excited to announce the third preview release of Visual Studio 2022! With Preview 3 there are more new capabilities on the themes of personal and team productivity, modern development, and constant innovation.
Visual Studio 2019 v16.11 is Available Now
We are excited to announce the release of Visual Studio 2019 v16.11 GA. This release improves upon the Git tooling experience in Visual Studio, enables Hot Reload for .NET applications, adds convenient links to the help menu, and upgrades LLVM tools to LLVM 12.
Speed up your .NET and C++ development with Hot Reload in Visual Studio 2022
With the recent release of Visual Studio 2022 Preview 2 we’d like to use this blog post to dive deeper into the brand-new Hot Reload experience which works for both managed .NET and newly supported native C++ apps.
Visual Studio 2022 Preview 2 is out!
We’re excited to announce the second preview release of Visual Studio 2022! Preview 1 was the first-ever 64-bit Visual Studio, delivering improved scalability. Starting with Preview 2, we’re focusing on delivering new capabilities on the themes of personal and team productivity, modern development, and constant innovation. In this blog we’re going to highlight a few of the new capabilities of Visual Studio 2022. We’d love for you to download it, try it out, tell us what you think, and join us in shaping the next major release of Visual Studio with your feedback.
Build and Debug C++ with WSL 2 Distributions and Visual Studio 2022
Visual Studio 2022 introduces a native WSL 2 toolset for C++ development. This toolset is available now in Visual Studio 2022 version 17.0 Preview 2. WSL 2 is the new, recommended version of the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) architecture that provides better Linux file system performance, GUI support, and full system call compatibility.
Design your Web Forms apps with Web Live Preview in Visual Studio 2022
In Visual Studio 2022 Preview 2, we have introduced a new designer for WebForms projects that is powered by Web Live Preview. In this post we will go over how you can use the new Web Forms designer as well as other features provided by Web Live Preview.
Debug code with force run to cursor
Have you ever had an experience when breakpoints in your application cause some disruption in your debugging, because you may need to test your updated code or focus on another area that does not need those break conditions? Starting Visual Studio 2022 Preview 2, you can use “Force Run To Cursor”, for these scenarios. It is like “Run To Cursor,” but you can keep your breakpoints and the debugger will skip over them until it reaches the line of code with the cursor. It will also skip any of the first-chance exceptions break conditions that may occur.
.NET Object Allocation Tool Performance
With the release of Visual Studio 16.10 comes a new analysis engine for the Performance Profiler, with the .NET Object Allocation Tool being the first tool to be onboarded. This provides the tool with some new features and a significant perf boost. Give it a shot with your C# app and see what spurious allocations you can remove to speed up your app!
Debugging for Unity with Visual Studio
So you’re ready to level up your debugging skills with Unity and Visual Studio? Check out our new video series in this playlist: Beginner Series: Intro to Visual Studio Tooling for Unity. This series focuses on common Unity troubleshooting scenarios and how you can use Visual Studio to find and fix them
Visual Studio 2022 Preview 1 now available
We’re excited to announce that the first preview release of Visual Studio 2022 is ready to install! This is the first release of a 64-bit Visual Studio and we’d love for you to download it, try it out, and join us in shaping the next major release of Visual Studio with your feedback.
Type less, code more with IntelliCode completions
IntelliCode now predicts the next chunk of code based on your current context, and presents it as an inline suggestion to the right of your cursor. If you like it, just hit tab-tab to accept it; otherwise simply keep on typing to adjust the completion further.
Announcing .NET 6 Preview 5
We are thrilled to release .NET 6 Preview 5. We’re now in the second-half of the .NET 6 release, and starting to see significant features coming together. A great example is .NET SDK Workloads, which is the foundation of our .NET unification vision and enables supporting more application types. Like other features, it is coming together to provide a compelling end-to-end user experience.
ASP.NET Core updates in .NET 6 Preview 5
.NET 6 Preview 5 is now available and includes many great new improvements to ASP.NET Core.
Announcing .NET MAUI Preview 5
While we are still recovering from Microsoft Build and .NET 6 Preview 4, we are here to share our continued progress with .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI) with .NET 6 Preview 5. In this release we have enabled animations and view transformations, completed the porting of several UI components, and introduced improvements to the single project templates.
Learn What’s New in .NET Productivity
The .NET Productivity team (aka. Roslyn) continues to enhance your developer productivity with the latest tooling updates in Visual Studio 2019. In the last release, we listened to your feedback and have been hard at work improving the .NET developer experience. To try out the latest .NET productivity enhancements download the latest Visual Studio release.
Build apps for Microsoft Teams with .NET in Visual Studio
We recently announced updates to the Teams Toolkit – a streamlined way to create, debug, and deploy apps to Microsoft Teams. In this post, we’re taking a closer look at how to get started developing a new Microsoft Teams app with .NET and Blazor using the Teams Toolkit extension for Visual Studio 2019 that’s in early Preview.
Visual Studio 2019 v16.10 and v16.11 Preview 1 are Available Today
We are excited to announce the release of Visual Studio 2019 v16.10 GA and v16.11 preview 1. This release makes our theme of developer productivity and convenience Generally Available to Visual Studio users! We’ve added C++20 features, improved Git integration, improved profiling tools, and a host of features that accelerate productivity.
Introducing the .NET Hot Reload experience for editing code at runtime
Today, we are excited to introduce you to the availability of the .NET Hot Reload experience in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.11 (Preview 1) and through the dotnet watch command-line tooling in .NET 6 (Preview 4). In the rest of this blog post, we’d like this opportunity to walk you through what is .NET Hot Reload, how you can get started using this feature, what our vision is for future planned improvements and clarity on what type of edits and languages are currently supported.
Announcing .NET MAUI Preview 4
Today we are pleased to announce the availability of .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI) Preview 4. Each preview introduces more controls and features to this multi-platform toolkit on our way to general availability this November at .NET Conf. .NET MAUI now has enough building blocks to build functional applications for all supported platforms, new capabilities to support running Blazor on the desktop, and exciting progress in Visual Studio to support .NET MAUI.
ASP.NET Core updates in .NET 6 Preview 4
.NET 6 Preview 4 is now available and includes many great new improvements to ASP.NET Core.
Announcing .NET 6 Preview 4
We are delighted to release .NET 6 Preview 4. We’re now about half-way through the .NET 6 release. It’s a good moment to look again at the full scope of .NET 6, much like the first preview post. Many features are in close-to-final form and others will come soon now that the foundational building blocks are in place for the release.
All vcpkg enterprise features now generally available
We are announcing the general availability of vcpkg versioning and registries, which, combined with our earlier release of manifests and binary caching, comprise our solution for vcpkg in the enterprise space. These features are free and are now on by default in the tool, no longer requiring feature flags to be manually turned on to opt in.
The Visual Studio family welcomes you at Microsoft Build 2021
Come join us at Microsoft Build, our largest developer conference, to explore what’s new in tech. This year, Build will be kicking off at 8:00 AM Pacific Time on Tuesday, May 25, 2021 (see in your time zone).You can expect an event packed with exciting product announcements, live keynotes, breakout sessions with cool demos, and Q&A with experts from different product teams, available across multiple time zones.
Finding Bugs with AddressSanitizer: Patterns from Open Source Projects
AddressSanitizer (ASan) was officially released in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.9. We recently used this feature to find and fix a bug in the MSVC compiler itself. To further validate the usefulness of our ASan implementation, we also used it on a collection of widely used open-source projects where it found bugs in Boost, Azure IoT C SDK, and OpenSSL. In this article, we present our findings by describing the type of bugs that we found and how they presented themselves in these projects.
Announcing Visual Studio 2022
Read all about the vision for the recently-announced Visual Studio 2022. It will be feature-rich and full of improvements that make you a happier developer. And did we mention it's 64-bit?
Enhanced Productivity with Git in Visual Studio
We continue to enhance the Git experience in Visual Studio and are excited to announce some long-awaited updates in version 16.10 Preview 2. You can download the latest Preview and run it right alongside your main release, leaving your production installation undisturbed.
Visual Studio 2019 v16.10 Preview 2 Releases Today
We are excited to announce the release of Visual Studio v16.10 preview 2. This release continues a theme of developer productivity and convenience. We’ve added C++20 ranges, IntelliSense completions, and new features for testing, Docker tooling enhancements, and Git integration!
Announcing .NET 6 Preview 3
Today, we are delighted to release .NET 6 Preview 3. This release is dedicated almost entirely to low-level performance features. These are the types of improvements that many folks don’t necessarily always fully appreciate, but they help a lot for many apps. Most of these improvements apply to the CLR type system directly, either making it function faster or better interplay with modern CPUs (think “hardware accelerate the type system”).
ASP.NET Core updates in .NET 6 Preview 3
.NET 6 Preview 3 is now available and includes many great new improvements to ASP.NET Core. Check out this post to see what’s new in this preview release.
Announcing .NET Multi-platform App UI Preview 3
With .NET 6 Preview 3 we are shipping the latest progress for mobile and desktop development with .NET Multi-platform App UI. This release adds the Windows platform with WinUI 3, improves the base application and startup builder, adds native lifecycle events, and continues to add more UI controls and layout capabilities. We are also introducing new semantic properties for accessibility. As we explore each of these in a bit more detail, we invite you to dotnet new along with us and share your feedback.
Announcing Open Source C# standardization
The C# compilers have been open source since 2014, now in the dotnet/roslyn repository. The dotnet/csharplang split off to provide a dedicate public space for the innovation and evolution of the C# language. Now, dotnet/csharpstandard completes the group, providing a public space for the ongoing work to document the standard for the latest C# language versions.
.NET 5 NuGet Restore Failures on Linux distributions using NSS or ca-certificates
We will be releasing updated builds of NuGet this week to accommodate NuGet restore failures on Linux distributions. The failures are observed when updated versions of the NSS or ca-certificates packages are installed. Users of .NET 5 and .NET 6 must upgrade to the latest .NET SDK builds in order to ensure continued functional use of the .NET SDK on Linux
Monitoring and Observability in Cloud-Native ASP.NET Core apps
Distributed applications are complex and bring in their own set of challenges for developers to debug and fix production issues. Though the microservices architecture helps maintain a smaller team that works autonomously and focuses on separate business domains, it introduces newer challenges due to its distributed nature. In this post, we talked in-depth about the Observability and Monitoring in a Cloud-Native app.
Announcing .NET 6 Preview 2
Today, we are glad to release .NET 6 Preview 2. It includes new APIs, runtime performance improvements, and early builds of .NET MAUI. It also includes builds for Apple Silicon, which were missing for Preview 1.
ASP.NET Core updates in .NET 6 Preview 2
.NET 6 Preview 2 is now available and includes many great new improvements to ASP.NET Core.
What’s new with GitHub Actions tooling in Visual Studio
Our Publish experience today enables many different ways for developers to get their development, staging, or production apps to various endpoints in their local/network environments and directly to their cloud resources in Azure.
Announcing the New TypeScript Handbook
Hey folks, we’re happy to announce that a fresh re-write of the TypeScript Handbook is out of beta and is now our website’s primary resource for learning TypeScript!
Address Sanitizer for MSVC Now Generally Available
We’re thrilled to announce that as of Visual Studio 2019 version 16.9, the C++ Address Sanitizer (ASan) for MSVC experience is fully supported. Thanks to all who tried it out while it was experimental in earlier versions of the IDE and filed issues to help make this release all-the-better!
.NET Core 2.1 will reach End of Support on August 21, 2021
.NET Core 2.1 will be reaching end of support on August 21, 2021. After this date, Microsoft will no longer provide updates (which includes security fixes) or technical support for this version. You’ll need to update the version of .NET Core you’re using to a supported version (.NET Core 3.1 or .NET 5.0) before this date in order to continue to receive updates
Introducing the .NET Upgrade Assistant Preview
Today we’re excited to introduce a tool we’ve been working on to help you upgrade your .NET Framework-based applications to .NET 5 called the .NET Upgrade Assistant. The .NET Upgrade Assistant is a .NET global command-line tool that gives you a guided experience for incrementally upgrading your applications. Currently in preview, the .NET Upgrade Assistant determines which projects need to be upgraded and recommends the order they should be upgraded in. The tool automates more tasks in the upgrade process that you would normally do manually like upgrading to the new SDK-style project format, re-targeting them to ...
New Dynamic Instrumentation Profiling for .NET in Visual Studio 2019
With the release of version 16.9 of Visual Studio, instrumentation profiling in Visual Studio just got better. Introducing our new dynamic instrumentation tool. This tool shows the exact number of times your functions are called and is faster than our previous static instrumentation tool. It also supports .NET Core instrumentation without needing PDBs
F# and F# tools update for Visual Studio 16.9
We’re excited to announce updates to the F# tools for Visual Studio 16.9. Since the F# 5 release last November, we’ve been hard at work to improve the F# tools experience in Visual Studio.
Frictionless repeated edits: IntelliCode suggestions in completion list
Now, in Visual Studio 16.9 you can easily apply suggestions in a frictionless way all without breaking your editing flow. You can find IntelliCode suggestions right in your IntelliSense completion list, and can find and apply the same change at other locations
Visual Studio 2019 v16.9 and v16.10 Preview 1 are Available Today!
Visual Studio team is eager to release Visual Studio 2019 v16.9 and v16.10 Preview 1. We hope you enjoy the new features highlighted from some of teams such as C++, .NET Productivity, Address Sanitizer, XAML Tooling, and IntelliCode teams. In addition, Visual Studio 2019 v16.9 is our next long-term servicing release
Tune in for .NET Conf: Focus on Windows, February 25th
The .NET Conf team is bringing you another “.NET Conf: Focus” event Thursday, February 25 all about building Windows desktop apps. We have finalized the agenda, speakers, and hosts that will make the day educational and fun. We have .NET and Windows team members along with community speakers and MVPs to show you some amazing things you can do.
Generating HTTP API clients using Visual Studio Connected Services
We’re continuing our series on building HTTP APIs with .NET 5. In the first post in this series we talked about building well-described APIs using OpenAPI, and then followed that up taking a deeper dive into some of the open-source tools and packages you can use to make your HTTP API development easier. In this post, the third in the series, we’ll talk about how Visual Studio Connected Services gives you a convenient way of generating .NET clients for your HTTP APIs so your .NET apps can use the APIs via the Internet.
Announcing .NET 6 Preview 1
Today, we are happy to deliver the first preview of .NET 6 and share what you can expect from the new release. We have been defining the overall shape of the release for the last few months, including a large set of new experiences and capabilities. The heart of .NET 6 is delivering the final parts of the .NET unification plan that started with .NET 5. The release will also include major improvements across all parts of .NET, including for cloud, desktop, and mobile apps.
ASP.NET Core updates in .NET 6 Preview 1
.NET 6 Preview 1 is now available and ready for evaluation. This is the first preview of .NET 6, the next major update to the .NET platform. .NET 6 is expected to ship in November of this year, and will be a Long Term Support (LTS) release.
Announcing TypeScript 4.2 RC
Today we’re excited to announce our Release Candidate of TypeScript 4.2! Between now and the stable release of TypeScript 4.2, we expect no further changes apart from critical bug fixes
Open-source HTTP API packages and tools
We’re continuing our series on building HTTP APIs with .NET 5. In the previous post, we covered Creating Discoverable HTTP APIs with ASP.NET Core 5 Web API. In this post, we’ll go further with a look at using open-source HTTP API packages and tools.
Analyzing Code with Infer#
Want to detect reliability and security bugs before they ship? Matthew Jin and Xiaoyu Liu show Infer#, a static analysis tool you can use to validate the correctness of source code without needing to execute it.
Blizzard Diablo IV debugs Linux core dumps from Visual Studio
Blizzard is using Visual Studio 2019 to debug Linux core dumps on WSL. The following blog post is written by Bill Randolph, a Senior Software Engineer at Blizzard working on the development of Diablo IV.
Improvements to the new Razor editor in Visual Studio
It’s been six months since we announced the first preview of a new experimental Razor editor for Visual Studio based on a common Razor language server and it’s time to give an update on our progress. The team has been hard at work bringing the new Razor editor up to parity with the old one, fixing bugs, and adding lots of great new functionality. We think the new editor is close to being ready for normal daily development, so now is the time to give it a try with the latest Visual Studio preview.
Windows ARM64 support for CMake projects in Visual Studio
In Visual Studio 2019 version 16.9 Preview 3 we added support for deploying CMake projects to a remote Windows machine and debugging them with the Visual Studio remote tools. CMake developers targeting ARM64 Windows can now cross-compile (with cl or clang-cl), deploy, and debug their projects directly from Visual Studio.
MSVC Backend Updates in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.9 Preview 3
In Visual Studio 2019 version 16.9 Preview 3 we have continued to improve the C++ backend with new features, new and improved optimizations, build throughput improvements, and better security. Here is a brief list of improvements for you to review.
Software development in 2021 and beyond
Software development in 2021 and beyond - An article by Amanda Silver on how we can come together to grow and support developer talent amid unprecedented demand, improve developer inclusivity and velocity, and help engineering teams scale-out through open source and low-code tools.
Azure Active Directory’s gateway is on .NET Core 3.1!
Check out this blog to learn how the Azure Active Directory team got massive perf gains by moving from .NET Framework to .NET Core 3.1.
Inspecting application metrics with dotnet-monitor
dotnet-monitor is a command line tool that makes it easier to get access to diagnostics information in a dotnet process. In the episode, Rich is joined by Sourabh who explains to us the importance of gathering application diagnostics and also gives us a demo of how to run dotnet-monitor in Kubernetes
Diagnostics improvements in .NET 5
Building upon the diagnostics improvements we introduced in .NET Core 3.0, we’ve been hard at work further improving this space. We are excited to introduce the next wave of diagnostics improvements.
Announcing TypeScript 4.2 Beta
We’re excited to hear your thoughts on TypeScript 4.2! With the beta we’re still in relatively early stages, but we’re counting on your feedback to help make this an excellent release
A more integrated terminal experience
As part of the new additions of the Visual Studio 2019 v16.8 release, and thanks to your feedback, we have added a couple new tricks to the integrated terminal! It now allows you to open a new terminal to a location based on your Solution Explorer selection and provides customizable commands for copy and paste.
Generate a GitHub Actions workflow with Visual Studio or the dotnet CLI
Learn how you can generate a GitHub Actions workflow with Visual Studio or the dotnet CLI
What’s next for System.Text.Json?
.NET 5.0 was released recently and has come with many new features and performance improvements. System.Text.Json is no exception. We have improved performance, reliability, and made it easier to adopt for people who are familiar with Newtonsoft.Json. In this post, we are going to talk about the progress that has been made with System.Text.Json, and what’s going to come next
PowerShell 7.2 Preview 2 release
Today we are proud to announce the second preview release of PowerShell 7.2. This preview is still based on .NET 5 as we wait for the first preview of .NET 6 which we expect PowerShell 7.2 to be based upon.
gRPC Web with .NET
gRPC-Web allows browser-based applications to call into gRPC services via a special proxy. .NET developers are now able to build and consume services that use gRPC-Web using the Grpc.AspNetCore.Web NuGet package. In this episode, James Newton-King joins Cecil to explain how gRPC-Web works and show us what the code looks like to support this feature
What’s new in Windows Forms runtime in .NET 5.0
Since Windows Forms was open sourced in late 2018, and ported to .NET Core, both the team and our external contributors have been busy fixing old bugs and adding new features. In this post we are going to talk about what’s new in Windows Forms runtime in .NET 5.0
Visual Studio 2019 v16.9 Preview 2 and New Year Wishes Coming to You!
As we quickly move towards the end of this unpredictable year, our team is delivering at least one more set of features your way in Visual Studio 2019 v16.9 Preview 2! Our C++, .NET, and Xamarin Forms teams have been hard at work to deliver some great new functionality.
Improving Debug-time Productivity with Source Link
Learn how you can improve debug-time with Source Link. With Source Link-enabled libraries, the debugger can download the underlying source files as you step in, and you can set breakpoints/tracepoints like you would with any other source. Source Link-enabled debugging makes it easier to understand the full flow of your code from your code down to the runtime. Source Link is language-agnostic, so you can benefit from it for any .NET language and for some native libraries.
Learn C# with Visual Studio, Visual Studio for Mac, and Unity (and win a free book!)
Learn C# with a fun beginner programming challenge, and enter to win a free copy of Head First C#! Ends December 9, so get started now!
C++20 Features in Visual Studio 2019 versions 16.7 and 16.8
We have continued our efforts to implement C++20 in the MSVC toolset, with noteworthy progress being made in VS (Visual Studio) 2019 v16.7 and VS 2019 v16.8. This blog post lists the features implemented since the C++20 Features and Fixes in VS 2019 16.1 through 16.6 blog post.
GitHub accounts are now integrated into Visual Studio 2019
Starting with version 16.8, you’ll be able to add both GitHub and GitHub Enterprise accounts directly from Visual Studio. The new functionality allows you to add and leverage them just as you do with Microsoft accounts, which means that you’ll have an easier time accessing your GitHub resources across Visual Studio.
What’s new in .NET Productivity
The .NET Productivity team (a.k.a. Roslyn) wants to help you be more productive! We’ve seen a lot of excitement in the past few months over our latest features which automate and reduce editing tasks to a single click and help save you time. In this post, I’ll cover some of the latest .NET productivity features available in Visual Studio 2019
The Coalition Sees 27.9X Iteration Build Improvement with Visual Studio 2019
Visual Studio 2019 v16.8 Preview 3.2 introduces significant build and link time improvements. In this blog post, we detail how the team in The Coalition building Gears 5 tested the compile and link times in three different versions of Visual Studio.
Getting Started With NuGet 5.8
NuGet 5.8 is included in Visual Studio 16.8 and .NET 5.0 out of the box. You can also download NuGet 5.8 for Windows, macOS, and Linux as a standalone executable.
Visual Studio 2019 v16.8 and v16.9 Preview 1 Release
Visual Studio team is proud to announce the release of Visual Studio 2019 v16.8 and v16.9 Preview 1. These releases have several notable features from the teams improving Git Productivity, C++, IntelliCode, .NET, XAML, and Web Tools. In addition, we hope you have been able to sign-up for our Preview of GitHub Codespaces as there is so much excitement about this new development environment!
Announcing the Release of the Git Experience in Visual Studio
We’re excited to announce that our new Git tooling is now the default source control experience in Visual Studio 2019, beginning with version 16.8. We’ve been working on this experience over the last year, iterating based on your feedback to build out key features, enhance performance, and fine tune quality. Above all, we’ve focused on improving discoverability for your common workflows and simplifying navigation to reduce context-switching.
Announcing .NET 5.0
We’re excited to release .NET 5.0 today and for you to start using it. It’s a major release — including C# 9 and F# 5 — with a broad set of new features and compelling improvements. It’s already in active use by teams at Microsoft and other companies, in production and for performance testing.
Announcing ASP.NET Core in .NET 5
.NET 5 is now released! .NET 5 is the next version of .NET Core and the future of the .NET platform. With .NET 5 you have everything you need to build rich, interactive front-end web UI and powerful backend services. ASP.NET Core in .NET 5 is loaded with lots of great new features and improvements
.NET 5.0 Launches at .NET Conf, November 10-12
.NET Conf is a free, three-day, virtual developer event co-organized by the .NET community and Microsoft. This year .NET 5.0 will launch at .NET Conf 2020. Come celebrate and learn about the new release.
GitHub Codespaces in Visual Studio
Want to see Microsoft's vision for cloud-powered development environments that enable developers to get up and running quickly and work from anywhere on any platform? Visual Studio PM Vix Ryan shows the ease of power of GitHub Codespaces.
A Tour of C++ Modules in Visual Studio
C++ module support has arrived in Visual Studio! Grab the latest Visual Studio Preview if you want to try it out. C++ modules can help you compartmentalize your code, speed up build times, and they work seamlessly, side-by-side with your existing code.
The Future of Visual Studio Extensions
With new improvements and additions such as GitHub Codespaces, Git Integrations, and IntelliCode Team Completions, Visual Studio has expanded to make development easier, more customizable, and accessible from any machine. As we continue evolving Visual Studio, what about extensions?! While still early in the design phase, we are creating a new extensibility model. This will make extensions more reliable, easier to write, and supported locally and in the cloud.
Announcing Version 1.0 of .NET for Apache Spark
Today, we announce the release of version 1.0 of .NET for Apache® Spark™, an open source package that brings .NET development to the Apache® Spark™ platform. This release is possible due to the combined efforts of Microsoft and the open source community. Version 1.0 includes support for .NET applications targeting .NET Standard 2.0 or later. Access to the Apache® Spark™ DataFrame APIs (versions 2.3, 2.4 and 3.0) and the ability to write Spark SQL and create user-defined functions (UDFs) are also included in the release.
gRPC performance improvements in .NET 5
gRPC is a modern open source remote procedure call framework. There are many exciting features in gRPC: real-time streaming, end-to-end code generation, and great cross-platform support to name a few. The most exciting to me, and consistently mentioned by developers who are interested in gRPC, is performance.
Get more done with search in Visual Studio
Over the years, the Search feature in Visual Studio has gotten faster and more capable. You might have missed some of the things it can do to help you be more productive and get the most out of Visual Studio. So, let’s take a closer look at how you can use Search in your daily work.
ASP.NET Core Series: PWA’s with Blazor
Progressive Web Applications (PWA) use modern browser APIs and capabilities to behave like a desktop app. Since Blazor WebAssembly is a standards-based client-side web app platform, developers have the ability to leverage these browser APIs and create PWAs using .NET.
Introducing .NET Live TV – Daily Developer Live Streams
Today, we are launching .NET Live TV, your one stop shop for all .NET and Visual Studio live streams across Twitch and YouTube. We are always looking for new ways to bring great content to the developer community and innovate in ways to interact with you in real-time. Live streaming gives us the opportunity to deliver more content where everyone can ask questions and interact with the product teams.
Announcing advanced Azure Machine Learning nanodegree program with Udacity
Earlier this year, we empowered over 10,000 students from all over the world to learn the basics of machine learning over the course of four months. We are excited to announce the next stage of skilling with the availability of an advanced machine learning nanodegree on Udacity. Starting today, students can enroll for the Machine Learning Engineer for Microsoft Azure Nanodegree Program
ASP.NET Core updates in .NET 5 Release Candidate 2
.NET 5 Release Candidate 2 (RC2) is now available and is ready for evaluation. ASP.NET Core in .NET 5 contains lots of great new functionality and improvements in this release.
Announcing .NET 5.0 RC 2
Today, we are shipping .NET 5.0 Release Candidate 2 (RC2). It is a near-final release of .NET 5.0, and the last of two RCs before the official release in November. RC2 is a “go live” release; you are supported using it in production. At this point, we’re looking for reports of any remaining critical bugs that should be fixed before the final release
Introducing the new Azure SDK for C++ Beta
The Azure SDK team is pleased to announce their first beta release of the new Azure SDK for C++. Unlike the previous Azure Storage specific SDK, the new Azure SDK for C++ is idiomatic to the C++ language and ensures consistency in behavior and API surface when communicating with multiple Azure services. This initial beta supports Azure Blob Storage, File Shares, and Data Lake; support for Azure KeyVault Keys is coming soon
Cross Platform Managed Memory Dump Debugging
I am really happy to announce that with the release of Visual Studio 16.8 Preview 3 you now have the ability to open and analyze managed dumps collected on Linux and use the best in class debugging tools available in Visual Studio.
Xamarin.Essentials 1.6 preview: macOS, media, and more!
Xamarin.Essentials has been a staple for developers building iOS, Android, and Windows apps with Xamarin and .NET since it was first released last year. Now, we are introducing Xamarin.Essentials 1.6, which adds new APIs ncluding MediaPicker, AppActions, Contacts, and more
Game Development with .NET
We’ve launched a new Game Development with .NET section on our site. It’s designed for current .NET developers to explore all the choices available to them when developing games. It’s also designed for new developers trying to learn how to use .NET by making games.
Build and debug Qt projects on Linux with Qt Visual Studio Tools
Qt is a popular cross-platform framework for application development and user interface design. Qt recently released a new version of the Qt Visual Studio Tools extension that integrates with Visual Studio’s Linux development with C++ workload. This extension allows you to build and debug MSBuild-based Qt projects on both Windows and Linux directly from Visual Studio.
C++ Core Check in Visual Studio
The C++ team has been expanding C++ Core Check’s coverage over the last five years. We have added more rules into the existing Type, Bounds, and Lifetimes profiles and have expanded into other areas of the C++ Core Guidelines
Enabling resilient DevOps practices with code to cloud automation
Learn how you can enable resilient DevOps practices with GitHub and Azure and ship faster while maintaining governance, security, and compliance standards while working remotely.
Simplify Microservice Development with Bridge to Kubernetes in Visual Studio
Setting up and running a microservice application locally can be time-consuming and complex. Visual Studio PM Nick Greenfield shows how Bridge to Kubernetes enables you to connect to a Kubernetes cluster without needing to manually source, configure and compile external dependencies on your development workstation
Achieving business resilience with cloud application development
Learn about new capabilities in Visual Studio, GitHub, and Azure to help your team move to remote development, increase velocity with confidence, and drive cost savings.
Azure Static Web Apps with .NET and Blazor
As of today, Azure Static Web Apps now has first-class support for Blazor WebAssembly and .NET Functions in preview, available in all supported regions. This was one of the top user requests since Static Web Apps was announced at Build. You can develop and deploy a frontend and a serverless API written entirely in .NET.
Using GitHub Codespaces with .NET Core
In May of this year we announced Visual Studio Codespaces and early support for .NET Core developers. Since then we’ve had some early adopters try it out and they gave us great feedback. We’ve made a bunch of progress on enabling more in the Codespaces capabilities as well. We’ve also made some fundamental changes as we are now GitHub Codespaces!
Using GitHub Actions in Visual Studio is as easy as right-click and Publish
. The publish experience in Visual Studio now has an option to generate a GitHub Actions workflow for CI/CD to your preferred Azure resources, by using deployment secrets configured in your GitHub repository.
Welcome C++ developers to GitHub Codespaces!
In May we announced Visual Studio Codespaces and its early support for C++ developers. Over the last several months we interviewed early adopters, and based on their feedback we continued to add new functionality and to improve the Codespaces experience.
New Features in Visual Studio 2019 v16.8 Preview 3.1
We are releasing Visual Studio 2019 v16.8 Preview 3.1. In this release, we are giving you access to improvements in Git Integration, C++20 conformance, .NET Productivity, Web Tools, and XAML .
A developer’s guide to Ignite 2020
Microsoft Ignite will take place online, kicking off on the morning of September 22nd, at 8:00 AM in the Pacific Time Zone. The event programming will include live segments, digital breakout sessions, and Q&A, available across multiple time zones. Be sure to visit the Ignite home page to view the event agenda and additional details. Check out the complete line up for Azure App Developer sessions
Announcing TypeScript 4.1 Beta
Today we’re announcing the availability of TypeScript 4.1 Beta!
Visual Studio IntelliCode Team Completions
With IntelliCode, you can train a custom model just for your codebase, based on your usages of those types. Learn more.
Debug Your .NET Core Apps in WSL 2 with Visual Studio
Are you a .NET Core developer who loves working in Windows and Visual Studio, but needs to test your app in Linux? Are you a cross-platform developer that needs an easy way to test more of your target environments? The .NET Core Debugging with WSL 2 – Preview extension gives you the ability to run and debug your .NET Core apps in WSL 2 without leaving Visual Studio.
A Multitude of Updates in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.8 Preview 3
Visual Studio 2019 version 16.8 Preview 3 comes with a huge collection of updates for C++ programmers. Download today to try out new additions in conformance, performance, and productivity.
C++ Coroutines in Visual Studio 2019 Version 16.8
With the adoption of coroutines into the C++ standard in 2019, we are now pleased to announce feature completion of C++20 coroutines in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.8.
Announcing Entity Framework Core (EFCore) 5.0 RC1
Today, the Entity Framework Core team announces the first release candidate (RC1) of EF Core 5.0. This is a feature complete release candidate of EF Core 5.0 and ships with a "go live" license. You are supported using it in production. This is a great opportunity to start using EF Core 5.0 early while there is still time to fix remaining issues. We're looking for reports of any remaining critical bugs that should be fixed before the final release.
Standard C++20 Modules support with MSVC in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.8
We are excited to announce Standard C++20 Modules support with MSVC in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.8. The toolset, project system, and IDE teams have been hard at work to create a first class C++ Modules experience in Visual Studio 2019. There is a lot to share, so let’s get right into it:
C11 and C17 Standard Support Arriving in MSVC
Our team is happy to announce that C11 and C17 are becoming supported language versions in the MSVC compiler toolset starting with Visual Studio 2019 version 16.8 Preview 3!
Announcing .NET 5.0 RC 1
Today, we are shipping .NET 5.0 Release Candidate 1 (RC1). It is a near-final release of .NET 5.0, and the first of two RCs before the official release in November. RC1 is a “go live” release; you are supported using it in production. At this point, we’re looking for reports of any remaining critical bugs that should be fixed before the final release. We need your feedback to get .NET 5.0 across the finish line.
.NET CLI Templates in Visual Studio
Visual Studio has had templates for a long time and .NET Core’s command-line interface (CLI) has also had the ability to install templates and use them via `dotnet new` commands. Starting in Visual Studio 16.8 Preview 2 we’ve enabled a preview feature that you can turn on that enables all templates that are installed via CLI to now show as options in Visual Studio as well.
Running WordPress on .NET Core
Did you know you can actually run WordPress on .NET Core? In this episode, Benjamin and Jakub from the Peachier project show us how they enable developers to run Wordpress on .NET Core.
Automatically find latent bugs in your code with .NET 5
It’s an exciting time to be writing code! Especially for .NET developers as the platform keeps getting smarter. We now include rich diagnostics and code suggestions in the .NET SDK by default. Before you would need to install NuGet packages or other stand-alone tools to get more code analysis. Now, you will automatically get these in the new .NET 5 SDK.
Visual Studio 2019 v16.8 Preview 2 Releases New Features Today!
New features in Git Integration, .NET Productivity, Web Tools, and Xamarin are releasing in Visual Studio 2019 v16.8 Preview 2. Each of our teams continue to work hard to delight our developers. For this reason, Preview releases are some of the most exciting for us as we wait to hear how our newest features impact your work.
Announcing .NET 5.0 Preview 8
Today, we are releasing .NET 5.0 Preview 8. The .NET 5.0 release is now “feature complete”, meaning that very nearly all features are in their final form (with the exception of bug fixes still to come). Preview 8 is, appropriately, the last preview. We plan on releasing two go-live release candidates before the final .NET 5.0 release in November.
ASP.NET Core updates in .NET 5 Preview 8
.NET 5 Preview 8 is now available and is ready for evaluation. Checkout what's new in this release
Announcing TypeScript 4.0
Today we are thrilled to announce the availability of TypeScript 4.0! This version of the language represents our next generation of TypeScript releases, as we dive deeper into expressivity, productivity, and scalability.
.NET Productivity Tips and Tricks
The .NET Productivity team (a.k.a. Roslyn) is constantly thinking of new ways to make .NET developers more productive. Roslyn PM Mika Dumont shows a number of the latest features that make your coding life better, including her favorite (IntelliSense completion in DateTime and TimeSpan string literals).
Detect First Run with Xamarin.Essentials
One common scenario that developers often need to integrate into an app, is showing a prompt when an app is launched for the first time. This could be to display a disclaimer or to walk users through the functionality of the app. This can be done on first launch of the app. Even after install or for a specific version. Using Xamarin.Essentials helps integrate this functionality with a just few lines of code.
Bring the best of the Web to your .NET desktop applications with WebView2
Today, we are happy to announce the release of the WebView2 preview for .NET applications! WebView2 is available for both .NET Core and .NET Framework. It can be used inside of WPF, Windows Forms and WinUI 3.0 applications all the way down to Windows 7
Building & Debugging Microservices faster using Kubernetes and Visual Studio
See how you can take advantage of Visual Studio tools to build, debug and deploy microservices to Kubernetes faster.
Evolving .NET Framework Monoliths with .NET 5 and Kubernetes
You want to migrate your .NET monolith to microservices so you can run it in Kubernetes? That could be a year-long project, and you really don't need to do it. This session gives you a pragmatic approach to evolving your monolith, breaking features out into new microservices to get all the benefits of Kubernetes without a full rewrite.
Build High-performance Microservices with gRPC and .NET
gRPC is a high-performance RPC framework designed for microservices. In this talk you will learn how to use gRPC in .NET and see how gRPC's support for deadlines and cancellation can be used to create fast, reliable microservice apps.
Announcing TypeScript 4.0 RC
Today we’re announcing our release candidate of TypeScript 4.0
Making repeated edits easier with IntelliCode suggestions
Your repeated edit experience is now enhanced by IntelliCode suggestions in Visual Studio 2019 16.7. IntelliCode spots repetitions and suggests other places in your code where you could apply that same change.
Angular Language Service for Visual Studio
Great news everyone: The Angular Language Service is coming to Visual Studio!
Visual Studio Remote Office Hours – Being a Program Manager for .NET & Visual Studio
Join Mads Kristensen as he sits down with Kendra Havens, .NET & Visual Studio Program Manager, to discuss what a day in the life of being a PM is like
Visual Studio 2019 v16.7 and v16.8 Preview 1 Release Today
Today we are excited to announce the release of Visual Studio 2019 version 16.7 and Visual Studio 2019 version 16.8 Preview 1.
Learn about the latest .NET Productivity features
The .NET Productivity team (a.k.a. Roslyn) is constantly thinking of new ways to make .NET developers more productive. We’ve been working hard to take the feedback you’ve sent us and turn it into tools that you want! In this post, I’ll cover some of the latest .NET productivity features available in Visual Studio 2019.
Three reasons to migrate your ASP.NET apps and SQL Server data to Azure
Here are three ways you’ll benefit from migrating your ASP.NET apps and SQL Server data to Azure
ASP.NET Core Updates in .NET 5 Preview 7
Exciting new updates to the Git experience in Visual Studio
New experimental Razor editor for Visual Studio
Mastering Multilingual in Xamarin.Forms
Performance Improvements in .NET 5
.NET 5 has already seen a wealth of performance improvements, and even though it’s not scheduled for final release until this fall and there’s very likely to be a lot more improvements that find their way in by then. learn about a bunch of the improvements that are already available now
C++ Linux development with Visual Studio: incremental build improvements and expanded shell support
Visual Studio 2019 allows C++ developers to target both Windows and Linux (including the Windows Subsystem for Linux) from the comfort of a single IDE. Visual Studio 2019 version 16.7 Preview 3 introduces two features specific to Linux development: improved build incrementality for MSBuild-based Linux projects, and support for a wider range of Linux distributions and shells.
Improving the authentication experience for enterprises leveraging Conditional Access policies
As part of the Visual Studio 2019 16.6 update, we’ve introduced a set of new capabilities to improve your overall authentication experience. While these changes benefit all Visual Studio users, they are especially helpful if you need to work across Azure AD tenants that have enabled multi-factor authentication (MFA) policies.
A deep-dive into WinUI 3 in desktop apps
Learn about WinUI 3 in desktop apps
Exciting new updates to the Git experience in Visual Studio
We’re excited to share new updates to the Git experience in Visual Studio
Announcing Entity Framework Core EFCore 5.0 Preview 6
Today, the Entity Framework Core team announces the sixth preview release of EF Core 5.0. This release includes split queries for related collections, a new “index” attribute, improved exceptions related to query translations, IP address mapping, exposing transaction id for correlation, and much more.
C++20 Features and Fixes in VS 2019 16.1 through 16.6
We’ve been busy implementing C++20 features in MSVC’s compiler and Standard Library, and migrating the latter to microsoft/STL on GitHub – in fact, we’ve been so busy that we haven’t posted a C++ toolset changelog since the VS 2019 16.0 toolset changelog. So, here are the compiler features and STL features/fixes that have shipped for production use in the last year.
.NET Virtual Events in July
With life gone virtual, there are tons of new ways to take your development skills to the next level! Below are just a few of the amazing online events, streams, and videos to tune into this July. Stay active with your developer communities through upcoming .NET and Xamarin events. Get lots of exciting content provided by the teams at Microsoft and the global community. Read on to find out more about events this month and information to help you host your own virtual experiences!
Introducing dotnet-monitor, an experimental tool
dotnet-monitor is an experimental tool that makes it easier to get access to diagnostics information in a dotnet process.
Orchard Core Release Candidate 2 now available
We are thrilled to announce that Orchard Core RC2 is now available.
Announcing .NET 5.0 Preview 6
Today, we’re releasing .NET 5.0 Preview 6. It contains a small set of new features and performance improvements. The .NET 5.0 Preview 4 post covers what we are planning to deliver with .NET 5.0. Most of the features are now in the product, but some are not yet in their final state. We expect that the release will be feature-complete with Preview 8.
ASP.NET Core updates in .NET 5 Preview 6
.NET 5 Preview 6 is now available and is ready for evaluation. Here’s what’s new in this release:
Announcing TypeScript 4.0 Beta
Today we’re excited to release the beta of the next major milestone in the TypeScript programming language: TypeScript 4.0.
F# 5 and F# tools update for June
We’re excited to announce more updates to F# 5 today! We shipped an initial set of features with F# 5 preview 1, and they have all been stabilizing since that release including a updates from last month. Today, we’re happy to announce some new language features, a sneak peek at using F# in VSCode notebooks, and some F# tooling updates that will align with Visual Studio 2019 Update 16.7.
3 Ways to Customize Your Windows Terminal
Windows Terminal is here! From the buzz of the announcement at Microsoft Build 2019 to the release of 1.0 at Build 2020, it’s generated excitement and interest from the dev community. Get started by downloading the Preview here.
gRPC-Web for .NET now available
gRPC-Web for .NET is now officially released. We announced experimental support in January and since then we’ve been making improvements based on feedback from early adopters.
Xamarin.Forms 4.7: Grid Column & Row Definitions, Multi-Bindings, Shapes & Paths, and More!
Today, the Xamarin.Forms team is releasing Xamarin.Forms 4.7 with a collection of feature additions and improvements. These new features will let you unleash your full creative abilities when developing Xamarin.Forms applications.
Resolving PowerShell Module Assembly Dependency Conflicts
When writing a PowerShell module, especially a binary module (i.e. one written in a language like C# and loaded into PowerShell as an assembly/DLL), it’s natural to take dependencies on other packages or libraries to provide functionality.
GPU accelerated ML training inside the Windows Subsystem for Linux
The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) enables Windows users to run native, unmodified Linux command-line tools directly on Windows. WSL usage has grown a lot since it was first announced 4 years ago, at Microsoft Build 2016, and now runs on more than 3.5 million monthly active devices!
Azure responds to COVID-19
The global health pandemic continues to impact every organization—large or small—their employees, and the customers they serve. Over the last several months, we have seen firsthand the role that cloud computing plays in sustaining operations across the board that helps us live, work, learn, and play.
Introducing “Web Live Preview”
If you work on any type of app that has a user interface (UI) you probably have experienced that inner-loop development cycle of making a change, compile and run the app, see the change wasn’t what you wanted, stop debugging, then re-run the cycle again. Depending on the frameworks or technology you use, there are options to improve this experience such as edit-and-continue, Xamarin Hot Reload, and design-time editors. Of course, nothing will show the UI of your app like…well, your app!
Introducing Local Process with Kubernetes for Visual Studio 2019
Today, we’re proud to announce the Local Process with Kubernetes preview feature in Visual Studio 2019 16.7 Preview 2.
.NET Core June 2020 Updates – 2.1.19 and 3.1.5
Today, we are releasing the .NET Core June 2020 Update. These updates contain security and reliability fixes. See the individual release notes for details on updated packages.
Be prepared for what’s next: Accelerate cloud migration
We are in the midst of unprecedented times with far-reaching implications of the global health crisis to healthcare, public policy, and the economy. Organizations are fundamentally changing how they run their businesses, ensure the safety of their workforce, and keep their IT operations running. Most IT leaders that we have had the opportunity to speak with over the past couple of months are thinking hard on how to adapt to rapidly changing conditions. They are also trying to retain momentum on their well-intentioned strategic initiatives.
How Do I Debug Async Code in Visual Studio?
In a recent post, we explored the basics of asynchronous code, why it’s important, and how to write it in C#. However, while it can improve your program’s overall throughput, async code is still not exempt from bugs! Writing async code makes debugging more difficult when potential deadlocks, vague error messages, and finding which task(s) are causing a bug are thrown into the mix. Luckily, Visual Studio has several new and old features compatible with managed, native, and JavaScript to help ease your frustrations with debugging async code. Let’s take a tour!
Announcing .NET 5.0 Preview 5
Today, we’re releasing .NET 5.0 Preview 5. It contains a small set of new features and performance improvements. The .NET 5.0 Preview 4 post covers what we are planning to deliver with .NET 5.0. Most of the features are now in the product, but many are not yet in their final state. We expect that the release will be very close to feature-complete by Preview 7.
ASP.NET Core updates in .NET 5 Preview 5
.NET 5 Preview 5 is now available and is ready for evaluation! .NET 5 will be a current release.
Announcing Entity Framework Core 5.0 Preview 5
Today we are announcing the fifth preview release of EF Core 5.0.
.NET Core June 2020 Updates – 2.1.19 and 3.1.5
Today, we are releasing the .NET Core June 2020 Update. These updates contain security and reliability fixes. See the individual release notes for details on updated packages.
June patches for Azure DevOps Server and Team Foundation Server
This month, we are releasing fixes for security vulnerabilities that impact our self-hosted product, Azure DevOps Server 2019, as well as the following older Team Foundation Server releases: TFS 2017 and TFS 2018. The following vulnerabilities will be fixed with this patch:
Visual Studio Subscriptions administrator feature updates
Over the past few months, we’ve interviewed a number of our Visual Studio Subscriptions administrators, and had a couple different surveys running in the administration portal to better understand what you like, don’t like, and absolutely hate about the current admin experience (yes the surveys are read by the PM team; it’s not a black hole).
Introducing YARP Preview 1
YARP is a project to create a reverse proxy server. It started when we noticed a pattern of questions from internal teams at Microsoft who were either building a reverse proxy for their service or had been asking about APIs and technology for building one, so we decided to get them all together to work on a common solution, which has become YARP.
Save money and improve agility and scale by modernizing your SQL Server to Azure SQL
We’re all adapting to uncertain times. As employees shift to more remote ways of working and consumer behavior changes to meet the new normal, businesses are faced with a challenging choice: slow down operations to operate more cost-effectively, lean into new opportunities that may not have otherwise existed, or both. Either way, the ability to quickly adapt and scale to changing conditions can help businesses operate in today’s environment and emerge more agile and ready to serve their customers more effectively tomorrow.
“The Azure SQL family: Innovation and value in the cloud “
How businesses respond in times of uncertainty is as varied as the businesses themselves. Many slow down operations to operate more cost-effectively, while others lean into new opportunities that didn’t exist before. Regardless of how you respond, ensuring your organization can cost-effectively adapt and scale to rapidly changing conditions is key.
Azure Maps Creator now available in preview
As enterprises continue to evolve in their digital transformation journey, there is a need for augmenting Azure Maps content with project-specific and private business knowledge of places. Today we're launching Azure Maps Creator in preview to extend location intelligence to indoor spaces.
Microsoft and Docker collaborate on new ways to deploy containers on Azure
Now more than ever, developers need agility to meet rapidly increasing demands from customers. Containerization is one key way to increase agility. Containerized applications are built in a more consistent and repeatable way, by way of defining desired infrastructure, dependencies, and configuration as code for all stages of the lifecycle. Applications often start and stop faster at runtime too, which often helps quickly start, stop, scale out, and update in the cloud.
Top Stories from the Microsoft DevOps Community – 2020.05.29
Happy Friday! This is the last post for this month – and it’s been a good month. I hope you’ve had time to check out some of the sessions from build via the Microsoft Build page. If you haven’t, it’s not too late to find something to watch. I’m still catching up on sessions.
Help us improve WPF and UWP XAML designer
We would like to make your experience developing WPF and UWP applications in Visual Studio better!
Profiling template metaprograms with C++ Build Insights
The use of templates in C++ programs can sometimes lead to longer builds. C++ Build Insights puts tools at your disposal for analyzing template usage patterns and their associated impact on build time. In this article, we show you how to use the vcperf analysis tool and the C++ Build Insights SDK to understand and fix problematic template patterns. We demonstrate the practical use of these tools through a case study in which we reduced build time for the Sprout open-source metaprogramming library by 25%. We hope these methods will help you approach your template endeavors with confidence!
F# 5 and F# tools update
We’re excited to announce some updates to F# 5 today! We shipped a lot of preview features since F# 5 preview 1, and they have all been stabilizing since that release. Today, we’re happy to announce some minor additions to F# 5 and talk about some pretty cool performance work we’ve been doing.
Continuous integration workflow template for .NET Core desktop apps with GitHub Actions
We know how time consuming it can be to quickly set up continuous integration and continuous deployment workflows (CI/CD) for your WPF and Windows Forms desktop applications.
Learn with Visual Studio Remote Office Hours
A new live broadcast directly from the Visual Studio team (my garage to be exact) is now streaming near you every Thursday morning. It’s about everything Visual Studio and you get rare insights into the inner workings of features, processes, and the people that make it all happen. This is like being in the machine room and you get to see and hear it all.
Reuse Xamarin.Forms Pages in an iOS Extension
iOS extensions allow developers to customize existing system behaviors by adding extra functionality to iOS and macOS Extension Points. Such as custom context actions, password autofill, and incoming calls filters. Even actions like notification content modifiers. Xamarin.iOS supports extensions and this awesome guide will walk you through creating an iOS extension using Xamarin tools.
Announcing Entity Framework Core 5.0 Preview 4
Today we are excited to announce the fourth preview release of Entity Framework Core (EF Core) 5.0.
Keep your IntelliCode completions fresh with our GitHub Action for Team Completions
Visual Studio IntelliCode helps by giving contextually-rich code completion suggestions as you type. This allows you to code faster, onboard to new projects sooner, and learn new APIs more quickly.
Using Visual Studio Codespaces with .NET Core
What a time to be a .NET developer! Lots of great announcements at Build, new releases for .NET Core and new preview projects for cloud native development make me excited to be a .NET developer!
Welcome to C# 9.0
C# 9.0 is taking shape, and I’d like to share our thinking on some of the major features we’re adding to this next version of the language.
Announcing Experimental Mobile Blazor Bindings May update
It’s been a few months so it’s time for another update of Experimental Mobile Blazor Bindings! This release brings several bug fixes in the areas of CSS styling support, adding XML doc comments to common APIs, and several syntax improvements to common controls.
Introducing Project Tye
Project Tye is an experimental developer tool that makes developing, testing, and deploying microservices and distributed applications easier.
Improvements to XAML tooling in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.7 Preview 1
Hello once again from the XAML tooling team in Visual Studio. Given this week’s many new and exciting releases at Microsoft Build 2020 I want to take this opportunity to recap what’s new for those building WPF or UWP applications, and where applicable, Xamarin.Forms. This blog post is similar to our update back in December 2019, so if you missed that post I recommend giving it a read as well.
Introducing .NET Multi-platform App UI
You can build anything with .NET. It’s one of the main reasons millions of developers choose .NET as the platform for their careers, and companies invest for their businesses. With .NET 5 we begin our journey of unifying the .NET platform, bringing .NET Core and Mono/Xamarin together in one base class library (BCL) and toolchain (SDK).
ML.NET Model Builder is now a part of Visual Studio
ML.NET is a cross-platform, machine learning framework for .NET developers. Model Builder is the UI tooling in Visual Studio that uses Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) to train and consume custom ML.NET models in your .NET apps. You can use ML.NET and Model Builder to create custom machine learning models without having prior machine learning experience and without leaving the .NET ecosystem.
Blazor WebAssembly 3.2.0 now available
I’m thrilled to announce that Blazor WebAssembly is now officially released. This is a fully-featured and supported release of Blazor WebAssembly that is ready for production use. Full stack web development with .NET is now here!
ASP.NET Core updates in .NET 5 Preview 4
.NET 5 Preview 4 is now available and is ready for evaluation! .NET 5 will be a current release.
Releasing Today! Visual Studio 2019 v16.6 & v16.7 Preview 1
Microsoft Build 2020 begins today! Our entire Visual Studio team has been eagerly awaiting this virtual event as it represents great effort and dedication from all of our team members and partners. We anticipate the announcements and demonstrations showcased this week will impact your work. Consequently, we and are eager to hear your favorites. The first releases out of our home offices are Visual Studio 2019 version 16.6 and 16.7 Preview 1. Both of these have productivity features to detail in a moment, but we have one more big announcement. Visual Studio Codespaces, our cloud-hosted development environments th...
Developer Velocity: Empowering developers to fuel business performance
Developers have been drivers of innovation and transformation for decades. They have pioneered innovation across countless industries and helped businesses weather tough conditions. Now, we are living in unprecedented times where organizations in every industry and sector are working to adjust to a new normal, rethinking how business is done and meeting new, changing customer demands.
Code, collaborate, and ship your apps from anywhere
Welcome to Microsoft Build 2020! This all-new 48-hour digital experience is designed to help you and other developers around the world come together to solve challenges, share knowledge, and stay connected. Here we’ll cover some of our latest innovations in developer tools and cloud platform technologies—to help you code, collaborate, and ship your apps from anywhere, so you can support the changing needs of your business and continue to deliver the quality experiences that your customers expect.
Expanding Visual Studio 2019 support for Visual Studio Codespaces
Now more than ever, developers are juggling multiple projects at work and at home. New features, bug fixes, PR reviews, & prototypes all compete for time and attention on limited resources. Visual Studio Codespaces provides hosted development environments that allow you to develop entirely in the cloud. With Visual Studio Codespaces, you can create dedicated, custom environments for each of your projects in seconds. You can connect to your codespaces from Visual Studio 2019, Visual Studio Code or the built-in browser-based editor. Each codespace is an environment that’s running on Linux (public preview) or Wi...
Developing for all 1 billion Windows 10 devices and beyond
This year, Microsoft Build 2020 is a digital-only event that we all get to experience from the comfort of our homes. We hope you enjoy learning about the new features and technologies that matter most to you. Today, I will have the privilege of sharing how developers can build apps for modern work using Microsoft 365 and Windows platforms. I will focus on 4 key areas of improvements to the Windows platform:
Announcing .NET 5 Preview 4 and our journey to one .NET
.NET 5 is the next version and future of .NET. We are continuing the journey of unifying the .NET platform, with a single framework that extends from cloud to desktop to mobile and beyond. Looking back, we took the best of .NET Framework and put that into .NET Core 3, including support for WPF and Windows Forms. As we continue the journey, we will move Xamarin and .NET web assembly to use the .NET 5 libraries, and extend the dotnet tools to target mobile and web assembly in the browser. At the same time, we’ll continue to improve .NET capabilities as a leading cloud and container runtime.
Announcing TypeScript 3.9
Today we’re excited to announce the release of TypeScript 3.9!
Start Developing on Windows 10, version 2004 Today
The Windows 10 SDK for Windows 10, version 2004 is now available with a go-live license. Build 19041, also known as the Windows 10 May 2020 Update, is now in the Release Preview Windows Insider ring.
Building a Progressive Web App with Blazor
A Progressive Web Application (PWA) is a Single Page Application (SPA) that uses modern browser APIs and capabilities to behave like a desktop app. Blazor WebAssembly (now in preview) includes support for Progressive Web Applications. Today, I want to show you how to build your first Blazor PWA. I am using the latest preview of Visual Studio for Mac, you can also create them using the latest Visual Studio 2019 Preview on Windows.
.NET Core May 2020 Updates – 2.1.18 and 3.1.4
Today, we are releasing the .NET Core May 2020 Update. These updates contain security and reliability fixes. See the individual release notes for details on updated packages.
.NET Framework May 2020 Security and Quality Rollup Updates
Today, we are releasing the May 2020 Security and Quality Rollup Updates for .NET Framework.
Faster builds with PCH suggestions from C++ Build Insights
The creation of a precompiled header (PCH) is a proven strategy for improving build times. A PCH eliminates the need to repeatedly parse a frequently included header by processing it only once at the beginning of a build. The selection of headers to precompile has traditionally been viewed as a guessing game, but not anymore! In this article, we will show you how to use the vcperf analysis tool and the C++ Build Insights SDK to pinpoint the headers you should precompile for your project. We’ll walk you through building a PCH for the open source Irrlicht project, yielding a 40% build time improvement.
Top Stories from the Microsoft DevOps Community – 2020.05.08
Happy Friday! This weekend in the United States we celebrate Mother’s Day. Growing up, my mom was definitely the project manager of the house. I think she may appreciate this weeks posts about work item and iteration management. All our tasks were assigned weekly, but we weren’t really an agile household (otherwise, I’d have self-organized myself out of cutting the lawn every week). We also have an interesting challenge with Azure API Management and a way to keep your private build agents .NET Core up to date.
PowerShell 7 Video Series
Enterprises, partners, and IT professionals store business-critical data in Azure Blob Storage. We are committed to providing the best-in-class data protection and recovery capabilities to keep your applications running. Today, we are announcing the general availability of Geo-Zone-Redundant Storage (GZRS)—providing protection against regional disasters and Account failover—allowing you to determine when to initiate a failover instead.
Azure Blob Storage enhancing data protection and recovery capabilities
Enterprises, partners, and IT professionals store business-critical data in Azure Blob Storage. We are committed to providing the best-in-class data protection and recovery capabilities to keep your applications running. Today, we are announcing the general availability of Geo-Zone-Redundant Storage (GZRS)—providing protection against regional disasters and Account failover—allowing you to determine when to initiate a failover instead.
Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets now provide simpler management during scale-in
We recently announced the general availability of three features for Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets. Instance protection, custom scale-in policy, and terminate notification provide new capabilities to simplify management of virtual machine instances during scale-in.
Using ML.NET for deep learning on images in Azure
In March 2020, ML.NET added support for training Image Classification models in Azure. Although the image classification scenario was released in late 2019, users were limited by the resources on their local compute environments. Training in Azure enables users to scale image classification scenarios by using GPU optimized Linux virtual machines.
Exposure Notification API Support for Xamarin Apps
Last month, Apple and Google announced plans for creating Exposure Notification APIs. By leveraging Bluetooth Low Energy, this help developers implement contact tracing for both iOS and Android. Our team has been tracking the releases of these APIs to ready them for Xamarin developers. Today, we are pleased to announce our first preview of bindings for the iOS and Android Exposure Notification APIs!
Pure Virtual C++ Conference 2020 Videos and Survey Available
The videos of all Pure Virtual C++ 2020 sessions are now available on YouTube.
Configuring Azure Services and emulators using Visual Studio
Starting with Visual Studio 16.6 Preview 2 the Connected Services tab offers a new experience called Service Dependencies. You can use it to connect your app to Azure services such as Azure SQL, Storage, Key Vault and many others. Wherever possible local emulation options are also available and more are planned for the future.
Vcpkg 2020.04 Update and Product Roadmap
This is the April 2020 blog post on vcpkg, the cross-platform, open source C/C++ library manager. In this post, we will share some information on the 2020.04 release of vcpkg and discuss the vcpkg product roadmap, which we are publishing and will keep up to date over time. To try out vcpkg for yourself and save yourself some time acquiring your project dependencies, follow the instructions on our GitHub repository.
Introducing Visual Studio Codespaces: cloud-hosted development for wherever you’re working
As we’ve all been adopting practices like social distancing and remote working, development teams have become more distributed. Our own team has been facing some of the challenges that are part of this transition, and it has motivated us to double down on our priority to help developers stay productive from anywhere. First, we made remote collaboration easier by enabling users to join Live Share sessions from their browser. Today, I’m excited to share more news, this time related to Visual Studio Online, that will help you be productive from wherever you’re working.
Blazor WebAssembly 3.2.0 Release Candidate now available
The Blazor WebAssembly Release Candidate is here! This release contains all of the features and improvements that we expect to release for the upcoming Blazor WebAssembly release. There are no more breaking changes planned at this point. Please give the Blazor WebAssembly Release Candidate a try and let us know what you think!
Rust/WinRT Public Preview
We are excited to announce that the Rust/WinRT project finally has a permanent and public home on GitHub:
Introducing C# Source Generators
We’re pleased to introduce the first preview of Source Generators, a new C# compiler feature that lets C# developers inspect user code and generate new C# source files that can be added to a compilation. This is done via a new kind of component that we’re calling a Source Generator.
Xamarin.Forms 4.6: Material Components, Shell, and the Future
Today, we are shipping Xamarin.Forms 4.6 with a host of quality improvements, including several new feature previews. With more controls available “in the box” than ever before, it has never been easier to quickly build quality mobile apps.
Announcing TypeScript 3.9 RC
Today we’re announcing the availability of TypeScript 3.9 RC, the release candidate of TypeScript 3.9. Between now and the final release, we expect no further changes apart from critical bug fixes.
Announcing General Availability of YAML CD features in Azure Pipelines
We’re excited to announce the general availability of the Azure Pipelines YAML CD features. We now offer a unified YAML experience to configure each of your pipelines to do CI, CD, or CI and CD together.
Exception Helper – Rethrown Exceptions
Ever had a bug in an async method that caused an exception? Been frustrated that the debugger doesn’t show you where that exception happened? Or been frustrated when looking at an exception that has an inner exception, but the debugger doesn’t easily show you where that exception was from? Starting from the Visual Studio 2019 16.5 release, the exception helper now contains the original call stack for a rethrown exception. This helps you get to the root cause in your code of any rethrown exceptions. This is especially helpful in the case of async exceptions, which are caught and then re-thrown by framework code.
Work flow of diagnosing memory performance issues – Part 2
In this blog post I’ll talk a bit about how to spend time wisely and then continue with the analysis. Originally I was going to delve deeper into the GCStats view but I actually just debugged a long suspension issue that I wanted to share 'cause it shows some general ideas of what to do when you hit problems during an analysis. You can skip to the analysis part directly if you like.
Announcing Entity Framework Core 5.0 Preview 3
Today we are excited to announce the third preview release of EF Core 5.0.
Blazor WebAssembly 3.2.0 Preview 5 release now available
A new preview update of Blazor WebAssembly is now available! Here’s what’s new in this release:
Announcing .NET 5.0 Preview 3
Today, we’re releasing .NET 5.0 Preview 3. It contains a set of new features and performance improvements. We’re continuing to work on the bigger features that will define the 5.0 release. The .NET 5.0 Preview 1 post covers what we are planning on building for .NET 5.0. Please take a look at the post and the dotnet/designs repository and share any feedback you have. And, of course, please install Preview 3, and test your workloads with it.
ASP.NET Core updates in .NET 5 Preview 3
.NET 5 Preview3 is now available and is ready for evaluation! .NET 5 will be a current release.
Xamarin.Essentials: Now with Permissions, App Theme, & Authentication
Since the first release of Xamarin.Essentials, developers have enjoyed the simplification of complex native features into a single cross-platform library. They can do this across iOS, Android, UWP, Tizen, watchOS, and even tvOS! No matter what type of app you are writing, there is absolutely something in Xamarin.Essentials for you. With the recent release of Xamarin.Essentials 1.5, even more cross-platform capabilities are unlocked for developers. Let us review just a few features that you can access right now.
Creating and Packaging a .NET Standard library
In this post we will cover how you can create a .NET Standard library and then share that with other developers via NuGet. We will be demonstrating this with Visual Studio for Mac, but you can also follow along with Visual Studio, or Visual Studio Code when using the dotnet CLI. If you are on macOS, and haven’t already download Visual Studio for Mac you can download it here. We will create a new .NET Standard library from scratch, configure it for NuGet and then publish to nuget.org. The sample library will be a logging package.
Finding build bottlenecks with C++ Build Insights
C++ Build Insights offers more than one way to investigate your C++ build times. In this article, we discuss two methods that you can use to identify bottlenecks in your builds: manually by using the vcperf analysis tool, or programmatically with the C++ Build Insights SDK. We present a case study that shows how to use these tools to speed up the Git for Windows open source project. We hope these tutorials will come in handy when analyzing your own builds.
GSL 3.0.0 Release (C++)
Version 3.0.0 of Microsoft’s implementation of the C++ Core Guidelines Support Library (GSL) is now available for you to download on the releases page. Microsoft’s implementation of gsl::span has played a pivotal role in the standardization of span for C++20. However, the standard does not provide any runtime checking guarantees for memory bounds safety. The bounds safety provided by gsl::span has been very successful in preventing security issues in Microsoft products. This release maintains the safety guarantees that we have always offered but modernizes our implementation to align with C++20 span.
Blazor WebAssembly 3.2.0 Preview 4 release now available
A new preview update of Blazor WebAssembly is now available! Here’s what’s new in this release:
Embedded Fonts: Custom Fonts in Xamarin.Forms
There are a number of posts about using custom fonts in Xamarin.Forms. However, embedded fonts definitely takes the cake. No more platform-specific handling of fonts and adding font files in three different projects. Just one file and an attribute in your shared code and your font is ready to go. In this post we will see how to use it in Xamarin.Forms 4.5.530 and up.
April patches for Azure DevOps Server and Team Foundation Server
This month, we are releasing patches that impact our self-hosted product, Azure DevOps Server 2019, as well as Team Foundation Server 2018. There are no security fixes with this patch; these patches include functional changes.
Work flow of diagnosing memory performance issues – Part 1
In this blog post I’ll talk a bit about contributing to PerfView and then continue with the GCStats analysis. You can skip to the analysis part directly if you like.
Sync Mobile Apps with the Cloud via Change Tracking API
If you are creating a mobile app that will work sending data back and forth from the cloud (I guess that 99% of the apps fall into this use case), you will have at some point the need to sync data between the app and the cloud itself.
See What’s New in Visual Studio 2019 v16.6 Preview 3!
Today we are excited to reveal some new features in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.6 Preview 3. Despite our challenges of learning how to work from home such as interruptions by kids, pets and internet blips, we continue to deliver new features to you. We are also eagerly preparing for our first virtual Build 2020 conference in May. We’d love to hear from where in the world you’ll be watching! Until the start of the conference, we hope these new features will keep you busy creating the software your imagination designs. Thank you for downloading our preview version, and, as always, we value your feedback through D...
Porting a C++/CLI Project to .NET Core
One of the new features of Visual Studio 2019 (beginning with version 16.4) and .NET Core 3.1 is the ability to build C++/CLI projects targeting .NET Core. This can be done either directly with cl.exe and link.exe (using the new /clr:netcore option) or via MSBuild (using <CLRSupport>NetCore</CLRSupport>). In this post, I’ll walk through the steps necessary to migrate a simple C++/CLI interop project to .NET Core. More details can be found in .NET Core documentation.
Balancing work on GC threads (.NET)
In Server GC, each GC thread will work on its heap in parallel (that’s a simplistic view and is not necessarily true for all phases but on the high level it’s exact the idea of a parallel GC). So that alone means work is already split between GC threads. But because GC work for some stages can only proceed after all threads are done with their last stage (for example, we can’t have any GC thread start with the plan phase until all GC threads are done with the mark phase so we don’t miss objects that should be marked), we want the amount of GC work balanced on each thread as much as possible so the total pause can...
MSVC Backend Updates in Visual Studio 2019 Version 16.5
In Visual Studio 2019 version 16.5 we have continued to improve the C++ backend with new features, new and improved optimizations, build throughput improvements, and better security. Here is a brief list of improvements for you to review.
Depending on the right PowerShell NuGet package in your .NET project
Alongside the executable packages published with each PowerShell release, the PowerShell team also maintain several NuGet packages that are available on NuGet to allow targeting PowerShell as an API platform in .NET.
Work flow of diagnosing memory performance issues – Part 0
I wanted to describe what I do to diagnose memory perf issues, or rather the common part of various work flows of doing such diagnostics. Diagnosing performance issues can take many forms because there’s no fixed steps you follow. But I’ll try to break it down into basic blocks that get invoked for a variety of diagnostics.
Bring your own machine to Visual Studio Online
Today Visual Studio Online provides fully-managed, on-demand, ready-to-code development environments in the cloud, but did you know you can also register your own machines and access them remotely from Visual Studio Code or our web editor? This is a great option for developers that want to cloud-connect an already configured work or home machine for anywhere access, or take advantage of the Visual Studio Online developer experience for specialized hardware we don’t currently support. We’ve made several improvements to streamline the self-hosted registration process and expand supported scenarios.
New templates for debugging CMake projects on remote systems and WSL in Visual Studio 2019
We heard your feedback that it can be difficult to configure debugging sessions on remote Linux systems or the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). In Visual Studio 2019 version 16.6 Preview 2 we introduced a new debugging template to simplify debugging with gdb.
A guide to remote development with Live Share
Working in a fully distributed, remote team requires sophisticated collaboration technology, which needs to be both supercharged and frictionless. Visual Studio Live Share was built on the bold principle of making remote developer collaboration as powerful and natural as in-person collaboration. We knew that our paradigm: “share your context, not your screen,” was only feasible, if we allowed the power of the modern IDE translate to remote collaboration sessions.
Announcing Entity Framework Core 5.0 Preview 2
Today we are excited to announce the second preview release of EF Core 5.0.
Thank you, Visual Studio docs contributors (March 2020)
We want to say a big thank you to everyone who contributed to the docs in March of 2020! You are helping make the Visual Studio docs clearer, more complete, and more understandable for everyone. We love that our community takes the time to get involved and share their knowledge.
ASP.NET Core updates in .NET 5 Preview 2
.NET 5 Preview2 is now available and is ready for evaluation! .NET 5 will be a current release.
Remoting into DevOps
The impacts of the COVID-19 global health pandemic on our lives and work will ripple out for years. With almost no notice, nearly the entire world has been thrust into remote work. As we adjust to this new normal, DevOps can help.
.NET for Apache® Spark™ In-Memory DataFrame Support
.NET for Apache Spark is aimed at making Apache® Spark™, and thus the exciting world of big data analytics, accessible to .NET developers. .NET for Spark can be used for processing batches of data, real-time streams, machine learning, and ad-hoc query.
Social Authentication with Xamarin.Essentials and ASP.NET Core
Many apps require adding user authentication. This often means enabling users to sign into existing Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and (now) Apple Sign-In accounts.
Regex Performance Improvements in .NET 5
The System.Text.RegularExpressions namespace has been in .NET for years, all the way back to .NET Framework 1.1. It’s used in hundreds of places within the .NET implementation itself, and directly by thousands upon thousands of applications. Across all of that, it represents a significant source of CPU consumption.
Helping Customers Effectively
I have to put a disclaimer here since this is not the usual type of blog posts I write. I’m by no means a master at communication. This is just what I thought that seemed to work well. YMMV of course. But I’d be very happy if they help you in some way ‘cause many of us work with customers. And I welcome your thoughts and suggestions.
Doxygen and XML Doc Comment support
Whether you’re using Doxygen or XML Doc Comments, Visual Studio version 16.6 Preview 2 provides automatic comment stub generation as well as Quick Info, Parameter Help, and Member List tooltip support.
Announcing .NET 5.0 Preview 2
Today, we’re releasing .NET 5.0 Preview 2. It contains a set of smaller features and performance improvements. We’re continuing to work on the bigger features that will define the 5.0 release, some of which are starting to show up as initial designs at dotnet/designs. The .NET 5.0 Preview 1 post covers what we are planning on building for .NET 5.0. Please take a look at the post and the designs repository and share any feedback you have. And, of course, please install Preview 2, and test any workloads you can with it.
Announcing TypeScript 3.9 Beta
Today we’re announcing the availability of TypeScript 3.9 Beta!
Announcing full support for a C/C++ conformant preprocessor in MSVC
We are excited to announce full support for a conformant preprocessor in the MSVC toolset starting with Visual Studio 2019 version 16.6 Preview 2.
Blazor WebAssembly 3.2.0 Preview 3 release now available
A new preview update of Blazor WebAssembly is now available! Here’s what’s new in this release:
IntelliSense Code Linter for C++
In Visual Studio 2019 version 16.6 Preview 2, we’re excited to announce a new preview feature to help C++ developers identify and fix code defects as they write code. The IntelliSense Code Linter for C++ checks your code “as-you-type,“ underlines problems in the editor, and Lightbulb actions offer suggested fixes.
Hosted App Model
In Windows 10 version 2004, we are introducing the concept of Hosted Apps to the Windows App Model. Hosted apps are registered as independent apps on Windows, but require a host process in order to run. An example would be a script file which requires its host (eg: Powershell or Python) to be installed. By itself, it is just a file and does not have any way to appear as an app to Windows. With the Hosted App Model, an app can declare itself as a host, and then packages can declare a dependency upon that host and are known as hosted apps. When the hosted app is launched, the host executable is then launched with t...
Increase Binding Possibilities with RelativeSource
The BindingContext is one of the most important parts of the Xamarin.Forms data binding system, especially in MVVM applications. Being built into the Binding type as the common source for bindings in a specific scope reduces plumbing code needed and makes XAML more concise. Unfortunately, for any given View there is only one BindingContext available to bind against. Most of the time this isn’t a problem, but complex data hierarchies often lead to situations where an element needs to bind to the BindingContext of some parent element in addition to its own local BindingContext. For example, you are working with a c...
Introducing the New Pull Request Experience for Azure Repos
Pull Requests are a vital feature for many Azure Repos customers. We are excited to announce that our new pull request web experience is now available in preview! Not only is the new experience mobile-friendly and faster, we have also added several new features to help you review pull requests quicker and improve your overall pull request experience. Customers will see the preview option rollout in the upcoming weeks.
DirectX 12 Ultimate Getting Started Guide
So, you’re a developer sold on the next-gen features in DirectX 12 Ultimate? Look no further than this little guide!
.NET Core March 2020 Updates – 2.1.17 and 3.1.3
Today, we are releasing the .NET Core March 2020 Update. These updates only contain non-security fixes. See the individual release notes for details on updated packages.
Improved Git Experience in Visual Studio 2019
Last week we released version 16.6 Preview 2 of Visual Studio 2019. It contained the first iteration of a revamped Git experience to improve your productivity when working with code on GitHub, Azure Repos, and other hosting services.
Visual Studio 2019 version 16.6 Preview 2 Brings New Features Your Way
Visual Studio 2019 version 16.6 Preview 2 comes with several new, exciting capabilities for you to try today. We recognize that everyone is facing unprecedented stress and concerns with current world events. The Visual Studio team are all working from home and learning how to navigate the challenges that brings to our day-to-day lives. Alas, even in these uncertain times, the team is extremely excited to bring you this latest update. Visual Studio 2019 version 16.6 Preview 2 comes with several new capabilities for you to try. Also, you have the opportunity to offer feedback in Developer Community. As you downl...
Catch up on the latest .NET Productivity features
The Roslyn team continuously works to provide tooling that deeply understands the code you are writing in-order to help you be more productive. In this post, I’ll cover some of the latest .NET Productivity features available in Visual Studio 2019.
Visual Studio Subscriptions resources for remote learning and productivity
If someone had told me three months ago, that very soon I would be required to stay in my house and only leave for necessities, I wouldn’t have believed it. But many of you, like me, are facing this as a new reality. This means increased work as we juggle working from home with our families, or increased spare time on our hands that we weren’t expecting.
Announcing F# 5 preview 1
We’re excited to announce that F# 5 preview 1 is now available! Here’s how to get it
Announcing DirectX 12 Ultimate
From the team that has brought PC and Console gamers the latest in graphics innovation for nearly 25 years, we are beyond pleased to bring gamers DirectX 12 Ultimate, the culmination of the best graphics technology we’ve ever introduced in an unprecedented alignment between PC and Xbox Series X.
Extending the Reach of Windows ML and DirectML
Since the initial release, Windows ML has powered numerous Machine Learning (ML) experiences on Windows. Delivering reliable, high-performance results across the breadth of Windows hardware, Windows ML is designed to make ML deployment easier, allowing developers to focus on creating innovative applications.
.NET Framework March 2020 Update for Windows 10 1607 (Anniversary Update) and Windows Server 2016.
Today, we are releasing an update for .NET Framework 4.8 on Windows 10 1607 (Anniversary Update) and Windows Server 2016.
Updates on .NET Core Windows Forms designer
We released a preview version of Visual Studio 16.6 – Visual Studio 2019 version 16.6 Preview 1 and with it a new version of .NET Core Windows Forms designer.
Visual Basic support planned for .NET 5.0
We’ve heard your feedback that you want Visual Basic on .NET Core. Earlier versions of .NET Core supported Class Library and Console applications types. Starting with .NET 5 Visual Basic will support:
ASP.NET Core updates in .NET 5 Preview 1
.NET 5 Preview1 is now available and is ready for evaluation! .NET 5 will be a current release.
Announcing Entity Framework Core 5.0 Preview 1
Today we are excited to announce the first preview release of EF Core 5.0.
Async ValueTask Pooling in .NET 5
The async/await feature in C# has revolutionized how developers targeting .NET write asynchronous code. Sprinkle some and around, change some return types to be tasks, and badda bing badda boom, you’ve got an asynchronous implementation. In theory.
Continuous integration and deployment for desktop apps with GitHub Actions
From speaking to desktop developers, we’ve heard that you want to learn how to quickly set up continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) workflows for your WPF and Windows Forms applications in order to take advantage of the many benefits CI/CD pipelines have to offer, such as:
More Spectre Mitigations in MSVC
In a previous blog post, Microsoft described the Spectre mitigations available under . These mitigations, while not significantly impacting performance, do not protect against all possible speculative load attacks, described in industry research as Load Value Injection. We are now adding two new switches and to provide a more complete mitigation of Spectre attacks based on loads for customers. These switches are only available on x86 and x64 platforms.
Visual Studio 2019 version 16.5 is now available
The Visual Studio 2019 team here in Redmond has been living under a perpetually grey, wet winter sky since our last minor release. Thankfully, we are beginning to see the sun making regular appearances. It is our hope this newest release will also brighten your day. Visual Studio 2019 version 16.5 contains anticipated new features from XAML, .NET, C++ and Debugging. In addition, we have addressed several issues found in our Preview releases. We believe this combination is ready to make your developer journey more productive. If you have any additional ideas to contribute to our product, we invite you to partici...
What’s New for Xamarin Developers in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.5
This week, Visual Studio 2019 version 16.5 was released, bringing new features and improvements for mobile developers in Visual Studio to help you build better mobile apps, faster.
Announcing .NET 5 Preview 1
At the end of last year, we shipped .NET Core 3.0 and 3.1. These versions added the desktop app models Windows Forms (WinForms) and WPF, ASP.NET Blazor for building single page applications and gRPC for cross-platform, contract-based messaging. We also added templates for building services, rich generation of client code for talking to gRPC, REST API services, and a lot more. We’re excited to see that .NET Core 3 has become the fastest adopted version of .NET ever and we’ve gained another million more users in just the last year.
.NET Conf: Focus On Xamarin is Next Week!
We are just one week away from the largest Xamarin digital event of the year, .NET Conf: Focus on Xamarin! It all starts at 8 AM PT, 16:00 UTC, Monday, March 23rd with a stellar keynote from Amanda Silver, Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Program Manager, along side Xamarin Program Managers Maddy Leger and David Ortinau. Join us on live on the .NET Conf website, and stay with us the entire day for great content.
What do you want to see next in ML.NET?
ML.NET is an open source and cross-platform machine learning framework made for .NET developers.
Announcing the .NET Core Uninstall Tool 1.0!
Today we are releasing the .NET Core Uninstall Tool for Windows and Mac!
Blazor WebAssembly 3.2.0 Preview 2 release now available
A new preview update of Blazor WebAssembly is now available! Here’s what’s new in this release:
Microsoft Emulator and Windows 10X Emulator Image (Preview) build 19578 available now!
Today we released new versions of both the Microsoft Emulator and the Windows 10X Emulator Image (Preview) to the Microsoft Store. The updated Microsoft Emulator is version 1.1.54.0 and the updated Windows 10X Emulator Image is version 10.0.19578. This refresh includes many updates to Windows 10X including the Win32 Container. Information on installation and requirements can be found at Get Windows dev tools.
Binding Android Kotlin Libraries
The Android platform, along with its native languages and tooling, is constantly evolving and there are plenty of 3rd party libraries that have been developed using the latest offerings. Maximizing code and component reuse is one of the key goals of cross-platform development. The ability to reuse components built with Kotlin has become increasingly important to Xamarin developers as their popularity amongst developers continues to grow. You may already be familiar with the process of binding regular Java libraries. Additional documentation is now available describing the process of Binding a Kotlin Library, so t...
Analyze your builds programmatically with the C++ Build Insights SDK
We’re happy to announce today the release of the C++ Build Insights SDK, a framework that gives you access to MSVC build time information via C and C++ APIs. To accompany this release, we are making vcperf open source on GitHub. Because vcperf itself is built with the SDK, you can use it as a reference when developing your own tools. We’re excited to see what sort of applications you’ll be building with the SDK, and we’re looking forward to receiving your feedback!
Every Xamarin.Forms Layout is a Repeater Control
When you need to display a lot of data Xamarin.Forms has you covered with awesome controls such as ListView, CollectionView, or CarouselView. These controls are great as they have built in support for scrolling, advanced layouts, and pull-to-refresh. Sometimes, you don’t need the full power of these controls and just want to repeat a control bound to a list of data. A great example is repeating categories for a conference session, profile photos, or icons. This can easily be accomplished by utilizing Bindable Layouts in Xamarin.Forms.
How to write a Roslyn Analyzer
Roslyn analyzers inspect your code for style, quality, maintainability, design and other issues. Because they are powered by the .NET Compiler Platform, they can produce warnings in your code as you type even before you’ve finished the line.
Binding iOS Swift Libraries (Xamarin)
The iOS platform, along with its native languages and tooling, is constantly evolving. There are plenty of 3rd-party libraries that have been developed using the latest offerings. Maximizing code and component reuse is one of the key goals of cross-platform development. This post will elaborate on a high-level approach to creating a Swift Binding for Xamarin.
The Performance Benefits of Final Classes
Marking your classes or member functions as can improve the performance of your code by giving the compiler more opportunities to resolve virtual calls at compile time.
.NET Garbage Collection Provisional Mode
PM stands for Provisional Mode which means after a GC starts, it can change its mind about the kind of GC it’s doing. But what does that mean exactly?
February ML.NET Model Builder Updates
ML.NET is a cross-platform, machine learning framework for .NET developers. Model Builder is the UI tooling in Visual Studio that uses Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) to train and consume custom ML.NET models in your .NET apps. Together, you can now create custom machine learning models for scenarios like sentiment analysis, price prediction, and more.
Custom AI-Assisted IntelliSense for your team (C++)
In Visual Studio 2019 version 16.5 Preview 3 you can now train custom IntelliCode models on your own codebases. This generates something we call a “Team Completions model,” because you’ll start to get suggestions based on your team’s coding patterns.
5 Things to be Excited About Xamarin.Forms 4.5
Every new release of Xamarin.Forms contains dozens of improvements. Today, we are thrilled to share that Xamarin.Forms 4.5 is now available bringing you AndroidX, new capabilities for creating responsive UI, and controls “in the box” to speed your development. Let’s look at what is new in Xamarin.Forms 4.5 with several features to get excited about!
ASP.NET Core Apps Observability
Identifying software error and business impact require a monitoring solution with the ability to observe and report how the system and users behave. The collected data must provide the required information to analyze and identify a bad update.
AVX2 floating point improvements in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.5
In Visual Studio 2019 We’ve been working hard on optimizing floating point operations with AVX2 instructions. This post will outline work done so far and recent improvements made in version 16.5.
The Spring 2020 Roadmap for Visual Studio published
The Visual Studio roadmap has been updated to provide a peek into the work planned for Visual Studio through June 2020. It captures significant capabilities that we plan to add, but it’s not a comprehensive feature list. Our goal is to clarify what’s coming so you can plan for upgrades and provide feedback on which features would make Visual Studio a more productive development environment for you and your team.
.NET Framework February 2020 Preview of Quality Rollup
Today, we are releasing the February 2020 Preview of Quality Rollup Updates for .NET Framework.
AVX-512 Auto-Vectorization in MSVC
In Visual Studio 2019 version 16.3 we added AVX-512 support to the auto-vectorizer of the MSVC compiler. This post will show some examples and help you enable it in your projects.
What’s New in Visual Studio Online
Last November, we unveiled the public preview of Visual Studio Online, which provides managed, on-demand development environments that can be accessed from anywhere using either Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio IDE (in private preview), or the included browser-based editor. Since then, the Visual Studio Online team hasn’t slowed down and we’re excited to bring you several new features ranging from enhanced environment configuration with custom Dockerfile support to enabling setting changes to environments. Your feedback in surveys, phone calls, and on our GitHub have been invaluable to us in defining and priorit...
Qt to support Visual Studio Linux projects
Qt is a popular cross-platform framework for application development and user interface design. Its various libraries and toolsets can be used to create, test, and deploy applications that target multiple platforms and operating systems including Linux, Windows, macOS and embedded/microcontroller systems. Qt recently announced its plan to support Visual Studio Linux projects in an upcoming release of the Qt Visual Studio Tools extension, scheduled for this summer.
Announcing TypeScript 3.8
Today we’re proud to release TypeScript 3.8! For those unfamiliar with TypeScript, it’s a language that adds syntax for types on top of JavaScript which can be analyzed through a process called static type-checking. This type-checking can tell us about errors like typos and values that are potentially and before we even run our code. More than just that, that same type analysis can be used to provide a solid editing experience for both TypeScript and JavaScript, powering operations like code completion, find-all-references, quick fixes, and refactorings. In fact, if you’re already using JavaScript in an editor...
TraceProcessor 1.0.0
TraceProcessor version 1.0.0 is now available on NuGet with the following package ID: Microsoft.Windows.EventTracing.Processing.All
.NET Core February 2020 Updates – 2.1.16, 3.0.3, and 3.1.2
Today, we are releasing the .NET Core February 2020 Update. These updates only contain non-security fixes. See the individual release notes for details on updated packages.
Xamarin.Forms & Xamarin.Essentials Go AndroidX
Last week we released our official stable NuGet packages for AndroidX, which are an exciting replacement for the Android Support Libraries. AndroidX streamlines components into smaller and easier to update libraries for developers to consume. In the post last week, we also outlined several ways to start migrating your Android applications to take advantage of them. Today, I wanted to talk more about our upcoming plans for AndroidX for both Xamarin.Forms and Xamarin.Essentials.
Easily Add, Remove, and Rename Files and Targets in CMake Projects
It’s easier than ever to work with CMake projects in Visual Studio 2019 16.5 Preview 2. Now you can add, remove, and rename source files and targets in your CMake projects from the IDE without manually editing your CMake scripts. When you add or remove files with the Solution Explorer, Visual Studio will automatically edit your CMake project. You can also add, remove, and rename the project’s targets from the Solution Explorer’s targets view.
Xamarin.Forms Comes to Surface Duo and Surface Neo
Today we are announcing the preview availability of our cross-platform dual-screen support for the Surface Duo and Surface Neo, two new and amazing devices coming from the Surface team. Previously, we debuted Xamarin.Android and Xamarin.Forms support for the SDK for Surface Duo. Now that the Windows team has unveiled support for the Surface Neo, we are ready to preview our new dual-screen support library for Xamarin.Forms.
Code Navigation for CMake Scripts
Visual Studio 2019 16.5 Preview 2 makes it easy to make sense of complex CMake projects. Code navigation features such as Go To Definition and Find All References are now supported for variables, functions, and targets in CMake script files. This can be a huge timesaver because CMake projects with more than a handful of source files are often organized into several CMake scripts to encapsulate each part of the project.
AndroidX NuGet Packages are Stable! (Xamarin)
Last year, we introduced AndroidX for Xamarin. In addition to that, today we are happy to bring you stable AndroidX NuGet packages!
Decompilation of C# code made easy with Visual Studio
Have you ever found yourself debugging a .NET project or memory dump only to be confronted with a No Symbols Loaded page? Or maybe experienced an exception occurring in a 3rd party .NET assembly but had no source code to figure out why? You can now use Visual Studio to decompile managed code even if you don’t have the symbols, allowing you to look at code, inspect variables and set breakpoints.
Making our Unity Analyzers Open-Source
Here at the Visual Studio Tools for Unity team our mission is to improve the productivity of Unity developers. In Visual Studio 2019 we’ve introduced our Unity Analyzers, a collection of Unity specific code diagnostics and code fixes. Today we’re excited to make our Unity Analyzers Open-Source.
.NET Framework February 2020 Security and Quality Rollup
Today, we are releasing the February 2020 Security and Quality Rollup Updates for .NET Framework.
Using .NET for Apache® Spark™ to Analyze Log Data
At Spark + AI Summit in May 2019, we released .NET for Apache Spark. .NET for Apache Spark is aimed at making Apache® Spark™, and thus the exciting world of big data analytics, accessible to .NET developers.
.NET Interactive is here! | .NET Notebooks Preview 2
In November 2019, we announced .NET support for Jupyter notebooks with both C# and F# support. Today we are excited to announce Preview 2 of the .NET Notebook experience.
Announcing .NET Conf: Focus on Xamarin
We are pleased to announce .NET Conf: Focus on Xamarin on Monday, March 23rd, 2020 beginning at 08:00 PST! This is a free, one-day livestream event that features speakers from the community and product teams that are working on building native mobile apps with Xamarin technology!
UIWebView Deprecation and Xamarin.Forms
A little while ago, Apple started sending out warning messages about the deprecation. This has not gone unnoticed by our Xamarin.Forms users, who directly created an issue for it. Today we have some great news to share: we have a solution for you! This post will give you a bit of background about our considerations and of course, how to avoid rejection to the Apple App Store.
Announcing Experimental Mobile Blazor Bindings February update
I’m delighted to share an update of Experimental Mobile Blazor Bindings with several new features and fixes. On January 14th we announced the first experimental release of Mobile Blazor Bindings, which enables developers to use familiar web programming patterns to build native mobile apps using C# and .NET for iOS and Android.
Toggling Tabs with Triggers (Xamarin)
Xamarin.Forms makes setting Tabs Icons super easy! All there is to do is set the Icon property to the path of an image and you are done.
Azure DevOps Roadmap update for 2020 Q1
Last week we updated the Features Timeline to provide visibility to several of our key investments for this quarter. I am happy to share a few highlights on some of the features for Q1. Note that each feature links to our public roadmap project where you can find more details about each item and see its status.
Improve Parallelism in MSBuild (C++)
Starting in Visual Studio 2019 16.3 we have been adding features to improve build parallelism. These features are still experimental, so they are off by default. When developing tools for Android, we introduced clang/gcc to the MSBuild platform. Clang/gcc relied on the parallelism model of the build system but MSBuild only parallelizes at the project level. This led to the creation of Multi-ToolTask (MTT) as a MSBuild Task. It forgoes MSBuild batching system and works around the typical single task limitations. This allows tasks to execution in parallel and engage other scheduling features not present in MSBuild....
C++ Modules conformance improvements with MSVC in Visual Studio 2019 16.5
C++20 is right around the corner. Along with the new standard comes the much anticipated Modules feature! The compiler team initially announced that we were working on the Modules TS back in 2017 and since then we have been hard at work improving the feature and improving compiler conformance around this feature. We finally feel it is time to share some of the progress we have made on the conformance front for Modules.
Announcing TypeScript 3.8 RC
Today we’re announcing the Release Candidate for TypeScript 3.8! Between this RC and our final release, we expect no changes apart from critical bug fixes.
MSVC Backend Updates in Visual Studio 2019 Versions 16.3 and 16.4
Versions 16.3 and 16.4 of Visual Studio 2019 brought many new improvements in code generation quality, build throughput, and security. If you still haven’t downloaded your copy, here is a brief overview of what you’ve been missing out on.
CMake, Linux targeting, and IntelliSense improvements in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.5 Preview 2
Visual Studio’s native support for CMake allows you to target both Windows and Linux from the comfort of a single IDE. Visual Studio 2019 version 16.5 Preview 2 introduces several new features specific to cross-platform development, including:
What’s New in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.5 Preview 2 for C++, Xamarin, and Azure Tooling Experiences
Last week, Visual Studio 2019 version 16.5 Preview 2 was released, bringing many new features and improvements for developers in Visual Studio to help you build better software faster. Please read some highlights of new features and improved developer experiences in this page.
Xamarin Customer Showcase: Little Cupid Transforms TV into Augmented Reality
Mobile apps can transform the way we watch TV and interact with our favorite shows using our mobile phones. We sit down with Kenney Myers, an acclaimed actor and producer, who explains what the Little Cupid Show app is all about, his inspiration, and what the future holds.
Announcing MBaaS Service Retirement
Microsoft has always been focused on enabling developers to be more productive, to achieve their ambitions, and subsequently make the world better for it. We strive to build amazing experiences so that developers can seamlessly build, test, deploy, run, and monitor their code. Earlier this year, we launched the App Center Auth and Data services in early preview. Together with App Center Push, the three services form the App Center Mobile backend as a service (MBaaS) offering, and give developers an easy entry into using Azure as a backend for mobile apps.
Blazor WebAssembly 3.2.0 Preview 1 release now available
Today we released a new preview update for Blazor WebAssembly with a bunch of great new features and improvements.
A new experiment: Call .NET gRPC services from the browser with gRPC-Web
I’m excited to announce experimental support for gRPC-Web with .NET. gRPC-Web allows gRPC to be called from browser-based apps like JavaScript SPAs or Blazor WebAssembly apps.
Xamarin Goes Dual Screen
Surface Duo introduces a whole new class of ultra-portable experiences running on dual screens. Today we are excited to announce our public preview of the SDK for Surface Duo. Xamarin developers can take advantage of the new SDK to enlighten existing apps and create innovative experiences that inspires creativity.
Announcing dual-screen preview SDKs and Microsoft 365 Developer Day
In November, we shared our vision for dual-screen devices and how this new device category will help people get more done on smaller and more mobile form factors. Today, we are excited to give you an update on how you can get started and optimize for dual-screen devices by:
What’s New for Xamarin Developers in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.5 Preview
This week, Visual Studio 2019 version 16.5 Preview 2 was released, bringing several new features and improvements for mobile developers in Visual Studio to help you build better mobile apps, faster.
DevOps for Android App Bundles (Xamarin)
Android App Bundle is a new app packaging format from Google for Android applications that dramatically reduces the install size for end users. Traditionally, when building an Android app, one would create one large APK file that all users would receive. When packaging your app in an App Bundle, applications are delivered dynamically to users based on their specific device. This means, the app that is installed is reduced in size by up to 50% with absolutely no code changes! We introduced support last year in Visual Studio 2019 16.3 and Visual Studio for Mac 2019 8.3 to package apps with App Bundles.
Removing older images in Azure Pipelines hosted pools
Over the past year, we have been able to update Azure Pipelines hosted images faster than ever before. We have also rolled out new images – Windows Server 2019 with Visual Studio 2019, Ubuntu 18.04, and macOS Mojave 10.14. We have seen a phenomenal growth in the use of hosted pools.
D3D12 Translation Layer and D3D11On12 are now open source
If you’re a developer looking to port your game to DX12, we have good news: There’s a helper library available to get you there more easily!
Top Stories from the Microsoft DevOps Community – 2020.01.17
The new year is underway, and the days are getting longer. This week, we have some exciting news to share, and some great articles to discuss. Grab a warm beverage and let’s get started!
Announcing: Visual Studio for Mac: Refresh(); event on February 24
Join us online on February 24th for the Visual Studio for Mac Refresh(); event!
Collecting and analyzing .NET memory dumps
Building upon the diagnostics improvements introduced in .NET Core 3.1, we’ve introduced a new tool for collecting heap dumps from a running .NET Core process.
.NET Framework January Security and Quality Rollup
Today, we are releasing the January 2020 Security and Quality Rollup Updates for .NET Framework.
Simplifying Visual State Manager with TargetName
The Visual State Manager (VSM) has been around since Xamarin.Forms 3.0, but we’re not done developing it. One of the things we really wanted to add is the ability to change a property on any child element within scope. Up until now, you could only set values of properties of the element you applied the VSM to. Recently a PR was merged that changes that for our new Xamarin.Forms 4.5 pre-release version. This functionality will add a lot of extra flexibility to the VSM. In this post I will tell you all about it and show you how to use it yourself.
Announcing Experimental Mobile Blazor Bindings
Today I’m excited to announce a new experimental project to enable native mobile app development with Blazor: Experimental Mobile Blazor Bindings. These bindings enable developers to build native mobile apps using C# and .NET for iOS and Android using familiar web programming patterns. This means you can use the Blazor programming model and Razor syntax to define UI components and behaviors of an application. The UI components that are included are based on Xamarin.Forms native UI controls, which results in beautiful native mobile apps.
.NET Core January 2020 Updates – 2.1.15, 3.0.2, and 3.1.1
Today, we are releasing the .NET Core January 2020 Update. These updates also contain security and reliability fixes. See the individual release notes for details on updated packages.
Announcing TypeScript 3.8 Beta
Today we’re announcing the availability of TypeScript 3.8 Beta! This Beta release contains all the new features you should expect from TypeScript 3.8’s final release.
C++ Improvements to Accuracy and Performance of Linux IntelliSense
Accurate C++ IntelliSense requires access to the C++ headers that are referenced by C++ source files. For Linux scenarios the headers referenced by a Linux MSBuild or CMake project are copied to Windows by Visual Studio from the Linux device (or VM, or Docker container, or WSL system) being targeted for the build. Visual Studio then uses these headers to provide IntelliSense. If the headers are not the correct versions, for example they are gcc headers rather than clang headers, or C++11 headers rather than C++17 headers, then the IntelliSense may be incorrect, which can be very confusing to the user. Also, for s...
Tips and Tricks for XAML Hot Reload
Happy 2020, Xamarin community! To kick start your productive new year, we want to share some favorite tips for XAML Hot Reload for Xamarin.Forms. With XAML Hot Reload, you can make changes to your XAML files, hit save, and immediately see those changes reflected in your running app!
.NET Conf: Focus on Blazor Teaser
In this episode, Robert is joined by Daniel Roth, who provides a look at the upcoming (Tuesday January 14) .NET Conf: Focus on Blazor (https://focus.dotnetconf.net). This is a free, one-day livestream event that features speakers from the community and .NET product teams that are working on building web apps with C# and Blazor. He also gives a nice overview of Blazor.
Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.4 is now available
The Visual Studio for Mac team is kicking off the new year with our best release ever! Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.4, released today, brings several exciting enhancements to the developer experience. Many of these items were top requests from our community and include:
Top Xamarin Videos of 2019
Each week, we bring to you great developer content and deep dives from the team and community in the form of Xamarin videos. In addition to our regularly scheduled shows you will find the Xamarin Community Standups and event recordings including the Xamarin Developer Summit. This last year we crushed every single milestone we set for ourselves including new videos and video views. In addition to breaking the 50,000 subscriber count! We want to give a huge “Thank You” to all of you that watched, commented, and subscribed.
December 2019 unified Azure SDK Release
Welcome to another release announcement for the unified Azure SDK. This month, we have expanded our service support to include a preview of the Azure Storage DataLake SDK.
C++ Inliner Improvements: The Zipliner
Visual Studio 2019 versions 16.3 and 16.4 include improvements to the C++ inliner. Among these is the ability to inline some routines after they have been optimized, referred to as the “Zipliner.” Depending on your application, you may see some minor code quality improvements and/or major build-time (compiler throughput) improvements.
Top Stories from the Microsoft DevOps Community – 2020.01.03
This is the first post of 2020, and the community did not take a break for the holidays! Today, I am reminded of the importance of 101s and introductory trainings. Wherever you are on your (Azure) DevOps journey, this community has content for you!
January Events for Xamarin and .NET Developers
New year, tons of awesome new ways to kick off your resolutions with Xamarin and .NET related events this January. Explore all the recent news and updates with your community at developer Meetups around the world. Including online, virtual events to watch from the comfort of your home!
Top Xamarin Blog Posts of 2019
2019 was an awesome year for Xamarin developers! It was packed full with new releases, exciting events, and product announcements. As well as brand new features to boost productivity and accelerate mobile development. Each week on the Xamarin blog, we aim to keep developers up to date with all of the happenings in the Xamarin universe. While also providing deep, technical content to help optimize your apps.
Languages & Runtime: .NET Community Standup – Dec. 12th 2019
Join members from the .NET teams for our community standup covering great community contributions for Framework, .NET Core, Languages, CLI, MSBuild, and more.
An Introduction to DataFrame
Last month, we announced .NET support for Jupyter notebooks, and showed how to use them to work with .NET for Apache Spark and ML.NET. Today, we’re announcing the preview of a DataFrame type for .NET to make data exploration easy. If you’ve used Python to manipulate data in notebooks, you’ll already be familiar with the concept of a DataFrame. At a high level, it is an in-memory representation of structured data. In this blog post, I’m going to give an overview of this new type and how you can use it from Jupyter notebooks. To play along, fire up a .NET Jupyter Notebook in a browser.
The .NET Conf Focus on Blazor Event Agenda is live – check it out
Schedule Session times are approximate. We will update final times soon! All times listed in Pacific Daylight Time (UTC -8).
Publish smaller apps with the Android App Bundle
The Android App Bundle (.aab) is a new upload format that includes all of your app’s compiled code and resources, but defers APK generation and signing to Google Play at install time.
Tips for learning Azure in the new year
As 2020 is upon us, it's natural to take time and reflect back on the current year’s achievements (and challenges) and begin planning for the next year. One of our New Year’s resolutions was to continue live streaming software development topics to folks all over the world. In our broadcasts in late November and December, the Azure community saw some of our 2020 plans. While sharing, many others typed in the chat from across the world that they’d set a New Year’s resolution to learn Azure and would love any pointers.
Debugging Linux CMake Projects with gdbserver
Gdbserver is a program that allows you to remotely debug applications running on Linux. It is especially useful in embedded scenarios where your target system may not have the resources to run the full gdb.
An Introduction to System.Threading.Channels
“Producer/consumer” problems are everywhere, in all facets of our lives. A line cook at a fast food restaurant, slicing tomatoes that are handed off to another cook to assemble a burger, which is handed off to a register worker to fulfill your order, which you happily gobble down. Postal drivers delivering mail all along their routes, and you either seeing a truck arrive and going out to the mailbox to retrieve your deliveries or just checking later in the day when you get home from work. An airline employee offloading suitcases from a cargo hold of a jetliner, placing them onto a conveyer belt, where they’re shu...
An Introduction to DataFrame
Last month, we announced .NET support for Jupyter notebooks, and showed how to use them to work with .NET for Apache Spark and ML.NET. Today, we’re announcing the preview of a DataFrame type for .NET to make data exploration easy. If you’ve used Python to manipulate data in notebooks, you’ll already be familiar with the concept of a DataFrame. At a high level, it is an in-memory representation of structured data. In this blog post, I’m going to give an overview of this new type and how you can use it from Jupyter notebooks. To play along, fire up a .NET Jupyter Notebook in a browser.
Build C++ Applications in a Linux Docker Container with Visual Studio
Docker containers provide a consistent development environment for building, testing, and deployment. The virtualized OS, file system, environment settings, libraries, and other dependencies are all encapsulated and shipped as one image that can be shared between developers and machines. This is especially useful for C++ cross-platform developers because you can target a container that runs a different operating system than the one on your development machine.
Relive Xamarin Developer Summit with On-Demand Videos
This summer developers from around the world gathered for the Xamarin Developer Summit. The two-day event was packed full of deep technical content from the Xamarin team and amazing community members. For those that could not attend, we hosted a live stream of the main session hall on the Xamarin Developers YouTube channel. Tens of thousands of developers tuned in live to watch and chat with developers around the globe. We have worked with the event organizers to make the remaining of the videos available on-demand. You have access to over 25 sessions from the event in a single playlist on YouTube or Channel 9. W...
Get Moving with Xamarin.Forms 4.4
We were speaking with a customer last year that builds dozens of mobile applications every year. They said, “We cannot remember the last time we made a mobile app that did NOT include a carousel view.” Many of you have expressed almost identical sentiments to us. So, we are very pleased to introduce a new control in Xamarin.Forms 4.4.0. Along with this we also have for displaying the pages or items in the carousel. As well as for providing contextual actions to any element in a . The release theme of getting things moving would not be complete without showcasing the new GIF animation support for images. Let’s ...
ConfigureAwait FAQ (.NET)
.NET added async/await to the languages and libraries over seven years ago. In that time, it’s caught on like wildfire, not only across the .NET ecosystem, but also being replicated in a myriad of other languages and frameworks. It’s also seen a ton of improvements in .NET, in terms of additional language constructs that utilize asynchrony, APIs offering async support, and fundamental improvements in the infrastructure that makes async/await tick (in particular performance and diagnostic-enabling improvements in .NET Core).
Participate in the Developer Economics Survey
The Developer Economics Q4 2019 Survey is now open! Every year more than 40,000 developers around the world participate in this survey, so this is a chance to be part of something big and share your experience as a developer and your view of the future of the software industry. Take the survey now or first read answers to the questions below.
GC Perf Infrastructure – Part 1 (.NET)
We open sourced our new GC Perf Infrastructure! It’s now part of the dotnet performance repo. I’ve been meaning to write about it ‘cause some curious minds had been asking when they could use it after I blogged about it last time but didn’t get around to it till now.
Multi-language identification and transcription in Video Indexer
Multi-language speech transcription was recently introduced into Microsoft Video Indexer at the International Broadcasters Conference (IBC). It is available as a preview capability and customers can already start experiencing it in our portal. More details on all our IBC2019 enhancements can be found here.
We made Windows Server Core container images >40% smaller
Over the past year, we’ve been working with the Windows Server team to make Windows Server Core container images a lot smaller. They are now >40% smaller! The Windows Server team has already published the new images in the Server Core Insider Docker repo, and will eventually publish them to their stable repo with their 20H1 release. You can check them out for yourself. I’ll tell you how we did it and what you need to know to take advantage of the improvements.
What’s New for Xamarin Developers in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.4
This week, Visual Studio 2019 version 16.4 was released with many improvements for mobile developers in Visual Studio. This release brings major productivity enhancements including the GA release of XAML Hot Reload for Xamarin.Forms, smaller Android APKs, tooling to migrate your applications to Android X, and numerous performance and reliability improvements. All developers can also take advantage of enhancements to Visual Studio 2019 in version 16.4 including pin-able properties in the debugger, IntelliSense support for XAML snippets, and new C# refactoring capabilities.
.NET Framework December 2019 Security and Quality Rollup
Today, we are releasing the December 2019 Security and Quality Rollup Updates for .NET Framework.
Modernizing Find in Files
Find in Files is one of the most commonly used features in Visual Studio. It’s also a feature that gets a substantial amount of feedback, and due to the age of the code, has been very costly to improve. Earlier this year, we decided to reimplement the feature from the ground up in order to realize significant performance and usability improvements.
A Bite-Sized Daily Digest for Crashes in Visual Studio App Center
We’re excited to announce the launch of a daily digest for crashes in Visual Studio App Center! This bite-sized email gives you a single view of your daily activity of new crash groups.
Updates to .NET Core Windows Forms designer in Visual Studio 16.5 Preview 1
We are happy to announce the new preview version of the .NET Core Windows Forms designer, which is available with the Visual Studio 16.5 Preview 1.
Announcing Entity Framework Core 3.1 and Entity Framework 6.4
We are excited to announce the general availability of EF Core 3.1 and EF 6.4 on nuget.org. The final versions of .NET Core 3.1 and ASP.NET Core 3.1 are also available now.
Embracing nullable reference types (.NET)
Probably the most impactful feature of C# 8.0 is Nullable Reference Types (NRTs). It lets you make the flow of nulls explicit in your code, and warns you when you don’t act according to intent.
Now available: Azure DevOps Server 2019 Update 1.1 RTW
Today, we are releasing Azure DevOps Server 2019 Update 1.1 RTW. Azure DevOps Server offers all the services of Azure DevOps, including Pipelines, Boards, Repos, Artifacts and Test Plans, as a self-hosted product that can be installed in your on-premises datacenter or in a virtual machine on the cloud.
5 Quick Tips For CollectionView (Xamarin)
Quick Tips to get started with ! Below are some useful new features and best practices for creating powerful native mobile experiences.
.NET Core 2.2 will reach End of Life on December 23, 2019
.NET Core 2.2 was released on December 4, 2018. As a non-LTS (“Current”) release, it is supported for three months after the next release. .NET Core 3.0 was released on September 23, 2019. As a result, .NET Core 2.2 is supported until December 23, 2019.
ASP.NET Core updates in .NET Core 3.1
.NET Core 3.1 is now available and is ready for production use! .NET Core 3.1 is a Long Term Support (LTS) release.
What’s new in XAML developer tools in Visual Studio 2019 for WPF & UWP
Since the launch of Visual Studio 2019 we’ve released many new features for XAML developers working on WPF or UWP desktop applications. With this week’s release of Visual Studio 2019 version 16.4 and 16.5 Preview 1 we’d like to use this opportunity to do a recap of what’s new throughout the year. If you missed our previous releases or simply have not had a chance to catch-up, this blog post will be the one place where you can see every major improvement we’ve made throughout 2019.
Pinnable Properties: Debug & Display Managed Objects YOUR Way
A few months ago, I wrote a blog post about the DebuggerDisplay attribute. This is a managed attribute that lets you customize how you view objects in debugging windows by “favoriting” specific properties. Since that post, we’ve streamlined DebuggerDisplay’s behavior with Pinnable Properties, a new managed feature available for Visual Studio 16.4!
DirectX 12 and Fortnite
On Monday, Epic Games announced that DirectX 12 support is coming to Fortnite. And today, the wait is over: anyone updating to the v11.20 patch has the option to try out Fortnite’s beta DX12 path!
‘Tis the Season for the Visual Studio 2019 v16.4 Release
Here in Redmond, glimpses of holiday cheer are filling our campus buildings as the season shifts to twinkling lights and frosty temperatures. The Visual Studio team is seizing this time as an opportunity to celebrate the comradery needed to respond to developer needs and suggestions. Equally, we are reflecting over what we can improve in the upcoming year as well as plan product features to deliver.
Announcing .NET Core 3.1
We’re excited to announce the release of .NET Core 3.1. It’s really just a small set of fixes and refinements over .NET Core 3.0, which we released just over two months ago. The most important feature is that .NET Core 3.1 is an long-term supported (LTS) release and will be supported for three years. As we’ve done in the past, we wanted to take our time before releasing the next LTS release. The extra two months (after .NET Core 3.0) allowed us to select and implement the right set of improvements over what was already a very stable base. .NET Core 3.1 is now ready to be used wherever your imagination or business...
Developing for the new category of dual-screen devices built for mobile productivity
Last month we shared our vision for dual-screen devices, designed to help people get more done on smaller and more mobile form factors. Today, we are going to share how developers can unlock this new era of mobile creativity. There are two stages to optimize for dual-screen devices:
Azure DevOps will no longer support Alternate Credentials authentication
We, the Azure DevOps team, work hard to ensure that your code is protected while enabling you to have friction free access. Until now, we’ve offered customers the ability to use Alternate Credentials in situations where they are connecting to Azure DevOps using legacy tools. While using Alternate Credentials was an easy way to set up authentication access to Azure DevOps, it is also less secure than other alternatives such as personal access tokens (PATs). As such, we believe the use of Alternate Credentials authentication represents a security risk to our customers because they never expire and can’t be scoped t...
CPU- and GPU-boundedness (DirectX)
We wrote this article to explain two key terms: CPU-bound and GPU-bound. There’s some misinformation about this terms, and we’re hoping this article can help fix this problem.
Pull-to-refresh with Xamarin.Forms RefreshView
There are tons of great new features packed into Xamarin.Forms 4.3. A new favorite feature is CollectionView. A highly performant and flexible way of displaying a list of data in a variety of layouts. One frequently-asked question with CollectionView, or other scrolling layouts, is how to add Pull-to-Refresh functionality similar to ListView. The answer: wrap it in the new RefreshView.
.NET Framework November 2019 Preview of Quality Rollup
Today, we are releasing the November 2019 Preview of Quality Rollup
.NET Core November 2019 Updates – 2.1.14, 2.2.8, and 3.0.1
Today, we are releasing the .NET Core November 2019 Update. These updates only contain non-security fixes. See the individual release notes for details on updated packages.
Developing on Windows – Hello World
My name is Avri and I’m a Program Manager here at Microsoft focused on improving the Windows developer experience! I’m a member of the engineering team here, where I get to collaborate with a bunch of other FANTASTIC people to create and improve Windows developer tools; and in this blog series, I’ll call out tons of ways to improve your end-to-end dev experience. Blogs in this series will include news on Windows Terminal, Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), Windows Performance, VS Code and Visual Studio, VM’s and Containers, Developer PowerToys, and more!
HockeyApp is being retired
The time has come to say goodbye. Last year we announced the transition from HockeyApp to Visual Studio App Center, a single solution for continuously building, testing, releasing, and monitoring your apps.
gRPC vs HTTP APIs
ASP.NET Core now enables developers to build gRPC services. gRPC is an opinionated contract-first remote procedure call framework, with a focus on performance and developer productivity. gRPC integrates with ASP.NET Core 3.0, so you can use your existing ASP.NET Core logging, configuration, authentication patterns to build new gRPC services.
Set Environment Variables for Debug, Launch, and Tools with CMake and Open Folder
There are many reasons why you may want to customize environment variables. Many build systems use environment variables to drive behavior; debug targets sometimes need to have PATH customized to ensure their dependencies are found; etc. Visual Studio has a mechanism to customize environment variables for debugging and building CMake projects and C++ Open Folder. In Visual Studio 2019 16.4 we made some changes to simplify this across Visual Studio’s JSON configuration files.
AI-assisted IntelliSense for your team’s codebase
Visual Studio IntelliCode uses machine learning to offer useful, contextually-rich code completion suggestions as you type, allowing you to learn APIs more quickly and code faster. Although IntelliCode’s base model was trained on over 3000 top open source C# GitHub repositories, it does not include all the custom types in your code base. To produce useful, high-fidelity, contextually-rich suggestions, the model needs to be tailored to unique types or domain-specific APIs that aren’t used in open source code. To make IntelliSense recommendations based on the wisdom of your team’s codebase, the model needs to train...
What’s new in Azure DevOps Sprint 160
Sprint 160 has just finished rolling out to all organizations and you can check out all the new features in the release notes. Here are some of the features that you can start using today.
Coming to DirectX 12: D3D9On12 and D3D11On12 Resource Interop APIs
D3D is introducing D3D9on12 with resource interop APIs and adding similar resource interop APIs to D3D11on12. With this new support, callers can now retrieve the underlying D3D12 resource from the D3D11 or D3D9 resource object even when the resource was created with D3D11 or D3D9 API. The new D3D9On12 API can be found in the insider SDK in D3D9on12.h. These features are available in Windows Insider builds now and do not require new drivers to work.
ASP.NET Core updates in .NET Core 3.1 Preview 3
.NET Core 3.1 Preview 3 is now available. This release is primarily focused on bug fixes.
Announcing Windows Community Toolkit v6.0
We’re thrilled to announce today the next update to the Windows Community Toolkit, version 6.0, made possible with help and contributions from our developer community. This release brings ARM64 support to the toolkit as well as an update to XAML Islands for .NET Core 3 support. In addition, we have new features like the EyeDropper control and new Win32 notification helpers. We also have an update to our preview of Microsoft Graph enabled XAML controls.
.NET Framework November 13, 2019, Update for .NET Framework 4.8
Today, we released an update for .NET Framework 4.8 to Microsoft Update Catalog.
Improvements in .NET Core 3.0 for troubleshooting and monitoring distributed apps
Operating distributed apps is hard. Distributed apps typically consists of multiple components. These components may be owned and operated by different teams. Every interaction with an app results in distributed trace of code executions across many components. If your customer experiences a problem – pinpointing the root cause in one of components participated in a distributed trace is a hard task.
Coming to DirectX 12: More control over memory allocation
In the next update to Windows, D3D12 will be adding two new flags to the D3D12_HEAP_FLAG enumeration. These new flags are “impermanent” properties, which don’t affect the resulting memory itself, but rather the way in which it’s allocated. As such, it’s important to call out that these flags aren’t reflected from ID3D12Heap::GetDesc or ID3D12Resource::GetHeapProperties. Let’s dive in.
Announcing .NET Core 3.1 Preview 3
Today, we’re announcing .NET Core 3.1 Preview 3. .NET Core 3.1 is a small and short release focused on key improvements in Blazor and Windows desktop, the two big additions in .NET Core 3.0.. It will be a long term support (LTS) release. We are coming near the end of the 3.1 release and expect to release it in early December.
ML.NET Model Builder Updates
ML.NET is a cross-platform, machine learning framework for .NET developers, and Model Builder is the UI tooling in Visual Studio that uses Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) to easily allow you to train and consume custom ML.NET models. With ML.NET and Model Builder, you can create custom machine learning models for scenarios like sentiment analysis, price prediction, and more without any machine learning experience!
.NET Framework Repair Tool
Today, we are announcing an update to .NET Framework Repair tool. In case you are not familiar with previous releases of this tool, here is a bit of background. Occasionally, some customers will run into issues when deploying a .NET Framework release or its updates and the issue may not be fixed from within the setup itself.
Building Modern Cloud Applications using Pulumi and .NET Core
This is a guest post from the Pulumi team. Pulumi is an open source infrastructure as code tool that helps developers and infrastructure teams work better together to create, deploy, and manage cloud applications using their favorite languages. For more information, see https://pulumi.com/dotnet.
Coming to DirectX 12— Mesh Shaders and Amplification Shaders: Reinventing the Geometry Pipeline
D3D12 is adding two new shader stages: the Mesh Shader and the Amplification Shader. These additions will streamline the rendering pipeline, while simultaneously boosting flexibility and efficiency. In this new and improved pre-rasterization pipeline, Mesh and Amplification Shaders will optionally replace the section of the pipeline consisting of the Input Assembler as well as Vertex, Geometry, Domain, and Hull Shaders with richer and more general purpose capabilities. This is possible through a reimagination of how geometry is processed.
Now available: Azure DevOps Server 2019 Update 1.1 RC
Today, we are releasing Azure DevOps Server 2019 Update 1.1 RC. This is a go-live release, meaning it is supported on production instances, and you will be able to upgrade to our final release.
EA and Visual Studio’s Linux Support
EA is using Visual Studio’s cross-platform support to cross-compile on Windows and debug on Linux. The following post is written by Ben May, a Senior Software Engineer of Engineering Workflows at EA. Thanks Ben and EA for your partnership, and for helping us make Visual Studio the best IDE for C++ cross-platform development.
Continuously deploy and monitor your UWP, WPF, and Windows Forms app with App Center
App Center is an integrated developer solution with the mission of helping developers build better apps. Last week, we announced General Availability support of distribute, analytics and diagnostics service for WPF and Windows Forms desktop applications. We also expanded our existing UWP offerings to include crash and error reporting for sideloaded UWP apps.
.NET Core with Jupyter Notebooks – Available today | Preview 1
When you think about Jupyter Notebooks, you probably think about writing your code in Python, R, Julia, or Scala and not .NET. Today we are excited to announce you can write .NET code in Jupyter Notebooks.
DirectX Raytracing (DXR) Tier 1.1
Real-time raytracing is still in its very early days, so unsurprisingly there is plenty of room for the industry to move forward. Since the launch of DXR, the initial wave of feedback has resulted in a set of new features collectively named Tier 1.1.
Announcing ML.NET 1.4 general availability (Machine Learning for .NET)
Coinciding with the Microsoft Ignite 2019 conference, we are thrilled to announce the GA release of ML.NET 1.4 and updates to Model Builder in Visual Studio, with exciting new machine learning features that will allow you to innovate your .NET applications.
Introducing C++ Build Insights
C++ builds should always be faster. In Visual Studio 2019 16.2, we’ve shown our commitment to this ideal by speeding up the linker significantly. Today, we are thrilled to announce a new collection of tools that will give you the power to make improvements of your own.
Announcing TypeScript 3.7
We’re thrilled to announce the release of TypeScript 3.7, a release packed with awesome new language, compiler, and tooling features.
Improved Continuous Delivery capabilities and caching for Azure Pipelines
We are thrilled to announce a new set of updates for Azure Pipelines, the Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery platform part of Azure DevOps. Our team has been hard at work for the past few months to deliver new features, including some that were much-requested by our users.
Re-imagining collaboration for Visual Studio with Live Share app casting and contacts
The power of Visual Studio for desktop and mobile development is unmatched in the industry, and we wanted to ensure that the best in class also had the best collaboration story. Live Share is reimagining this collaboration story by reducing the barriers to collaboration, increasing the fidelity of the collaboration experience while building desktop apps, and enhancing this workflow.
Coming to DirectX 12— Sampler Feedback: some useful once-hidden data, unlocked
Suppose you are shading a complicated 3D scene. The camera moves swiftly throughout the scene, causing some objects to be moved into different levels of detail. Since you need to aggressively optimize for memory, you bind resources to cope with the demand for different LODs. Perhaps you use a texture streaming system; perhaps it uses tiled resources to keep those gigantic 4K mip 0s non-resident if you don’t need them. Anyway, you have a shader which samples a mipped texture using A Very Complicated sampling pattern. Pick your favorite one, say anisotropic.
Developer platform updates at Microsoft Ignite 2019
Earlier this year, we announced some awesome advancements in how developers can better connect with their customers and build people-centric experiences using the Microsoft 365 platform. Today, we’re continuing that story and sharing how you can use these enhancements to build more innovative applications and be more productive. We are focusing on three key areas:
An Update on C++/CLI and .NET Core
The first public release of our C++/CLI support for .NET Core 3.1 is now available for public preview! It is included in Visual Studio 2019 update 16.4 Preview 2. We would love it if you could try it out and send us any feedback you have. For more info about what this is and the roadmap going forward, check out my last post on the future of C++/CLI and .NET Core.
.NET Core 3 for Windows Desktop
In September, we released .NET Core support for building Windows desktop applications, including WPF and Windows Forms. Since then, we have been delighted to see so many developers share their stories of migrating desktop applications (and controls libraries) to .NET Core. We constantly hear stories of .NET Windows desktop developers powering their business with WPF and Windows Forms, especially in scenarios where the desktop shines, including:
Introducing Orleans 3.0
We are excited to announce the Orleans 3.0 release. A great number of improvements and fixes went in, as well as several new features, since Orleans 2.0. These changes were driven by the experience of many people running Orleans-based applications in production in a wide range of scenarios and environments, and by the ingenuity and passion of the global Orleans community that always strives to make the codebase better, faster, and more flexible. A BIG Thank You to all who contributed to this release in various ways!
Announcing Visual Studio Online Public Preview
Available beginning at Microsoft’s Ignite conference as a public preview, Visual Studio Online provides managed, on-demand development environments that can be used for long-term projects, to quickly prototype a new feature, or for short-term tasks like reviewing pull requests. You can work with environments from anywhere using either Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio IDE (in private preview), or the included browser-based editor.
Re-imagining developer productivity with AI-assisted tools
Harnessing the wisdom of the community, Visual Studio IntelliCode is revolutionizing developer productivity. We started with AI-assisted IntelliSense and are now expanding the application of artificial intelligence to significantly accelerate learning, radically improve development agility, and increase code quality by means of two exciting new capabilities: whole line completions and refactoring.
ASP.NET Core updates in .NET Core 3.1 Preview 2
.NET Core 3.1 Preview 2 is now available. This release is primarily focused on bug fixes, but it contains a few new features as well.
All Things Developer Tools at Microsoft Ignite
There is a lot of developer goodness happening at Ignite this week. Visual Studio Online is available as a public preview for developers to try cloud hosted development environments with your tool of choice. Visual Studio 2019 version 16.4 Preview 3 and Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.3 Preview 2 just released with tons of new productivity features. There are also a bunch of great sessions that deep dive into all this and much more.
Announcing .NET Core 3.1 Preview 2
Today, we’re announcing .NET Core 3.1 Preview 2. .NET Core 3.1 will be a small and short release focused on key improvements in Blazor and Windows desktop, the two big additions in .NET Core 3.0.. It will be a long term support (LTS) release with an expected final ship date of December 2019.
Microsoft C++ Team At CppCon 2019: Videos Available
Last month a large contingent from the Microsoft C++ team attended CppCon. We gave fourteen presentations covering our tools, developments in the standard, concepts which underlie the work we do, and more.
Announcing the Azure Boards app for Microsoft Teams
Developers today rely on communication platforms like Microsoft Teams extensively to get work done. Often, Microsoft Teams is the place where ideas are discussed, insights are generated and product defects are identified. The same discussions then can continue in Azure Boards where development teams actually plan and manage their work. We are excited to announce the Azure Boards app for Microsoft Teams that brings work in Azure Boards closer to the team channel in Microsoft Teams.
Start building with Azure Cognitive Services for free
Innovate at no cost to you, with out-of-the box AI services that are newly available for Azure free account users. Join the 1.3 million developers who have been using Cognitive Services to build AI powered apps to date. With the broadest offering of AI services in the market, Azure Cognitive Services can unlock AI for more scenarios than other cloud providers. Give your apps, websites, and bots the ability to see, understand, and interpret people’s needs — all it takes is an API call — by using natural methods of communication. Businesses in various industries have transformed how they operate using the very same...
Dev Preview of New DirectX 12 Features
In this blog post, we will preview a suite of new DirectX 12 features, including DirectX Raytracing tier 1.1, Mesh Shader, and Sampler Feedback. We will briefly explain what each feature is and how it will improve the gaming experience. In subsequent weeks, we will publish more technical details on each feature along with feature specs. All these features are currently available in Windows 10 Insider Preview Builds (20H1) through the Windows Insider Program.
Build Great Xamarin Apps with App Center
Visual Studio App Center offers integrated and end-to-end developer services for building, managing and powering your Xamarin iOS and Android apps. From modular SDKs designed to implement services with just a few lines of code to simplified continuous integration and delivery pipelines. In addition to powerful Authentication, Data Sync, and Push Notifications backend services that seamlessly scale as your app grows. App Center empowers your team to be more productive.
Announcing TypeScript 3.7 RC
We’re pleased to announce TypeScript 3.7 RC, the release candidate of TypeScript 3.7. Between now and the final release, we expect no further changes except for critical bug fixes.
AddressSanitizer (ASan) for Windows with MSVC
We are pleased to announce AddressSanitizer (ASan) support for the MSVC toolset. ASan is a fast memory error detector that can find runtime memory issues such as use-after-free and perform out of bounds checks. Support for sanitizers has been one of our more popular suggestions on Developer Community, and we can now say that we have an experience for ASan on Windows, in addition to our existing support for Linux projects.
A Look Inside D3D12 Resource State Barriers
Many D3D12 developers have become accustomed to managing resource state transitions and read/write hazards themselves using the ResourceBarrier API. Prior to D3D12, such details were handled internally by the driver. However, D3D12 command lists cannot provide the same deterministic state tracking as D3D10 and D3D11 device contexts. Therefore, state transitions need to be scheduled during D3D12 command list recording. When used responsibly, applications are able to minimize GPU cache flushes and resource state changes. However, it can be tricky to properly leverage resource barriers for correct behavior while a...
Securely Access, Visualize and Manage your Mobile App Data with Data Metrics View and Data Explorer capabilities in Visual Studio App Center
Over the past few weeks, the Visual Studio App Center team has shipped new functionality to make managing and syncing your data much easier. Recently, we shipped an entirely new portal experience for App Center Data, enabling you to view your app’s utilization metrics and engage with your app data.
Windows 10 SDK Preview Build 19002 available now!
Today, we released a new Windows 10 Preview Build of the SDK to be used in conjunction with Windows 10 Insider Preview (Build 19002 or greater). The Preview SDK Build 19002 contains bug fixes and under development changes to the API surface area.
Xamarin.Forms 4.3 is live! Introducing CollectionView
Today we’re incredibly pleased to announce the stable release of Xamarin.Forms 4.3.0. This release marks the removal of the experimental flag from CollectionView as it moves into stable status. Along with this, comes a number of enhancements and contributions from the community. Including SourceLink support, the ability to display HTML on Labels, and more.
October 2019 unified Azure SDK preview
Welcome back to another release of the unified Azure Data client libraries. For the most part, the API surface areas of the SDKs have been stabilized based on your feedback. Thank you to everyone who has been submitting issues on GitHub and keep the feedback coming.
Upcoming SameSite Cookie Changes in ASP.NET and ASP.NET Core
SameSite is a 2016 extension to HTTP cookies intended to mitigate cross site request forgery (CSRF). The original design was an opt-in feature which could be used by adding a new SameSite property to cookies. It had two values, Lax and Strict. Setting the value to Lax indicated the cookie should be sent on navigation within the same site, or through GET navigation to your site from other sites. A value of Strict limited the cookie to requests which only originated from the same site. Not setting the property at all placed no restrictions on how the cookie flowed in requests. OpenIdConnect authentication operation...
Fall .NET Core Survey
It’s been a busy time for .NET Core – we just shipped 3.0, and are currently working on a few updates for v3.1 (due in November.) As we turn our attention to .NET Core 5.0, we want to take a step back and see what you are doing with .NET Core and how we can make it even better.
What Windows 10, version 1909 Means for Developers
As stated in this article, Windows 10, version 1909 is a scoped set of features for select performance improvements, enterprise features and quality enhancements. Developers should be aware of this release, but no action is necessary at this time.
.NET Framework October 2019 Preview of Quality Rollup
Today, we are releasing the October 2019 Preview of Quality Rollup and Cumulative Updates for .NET Framework.
Announcing .NET Core 3.1 Preview 1
Today, we’re announcing .NET Core 3.1 Preview 1. .NET Core 3.1 will be a small release focused on key improvements in Blazor and Windows desktop, the two big additions in .NET Core 3.0. It will be a long term support (LTS) release with an expected final ship date of December 2019.
ASP.NET Core updates in .NET Core 3.1 Preview 1
.NET Core 3.1 Preview 1 is now available. This release is primarily focused on bug fixes, but it contains a few new features as well.
Usability Improvements for CMake in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.4: Launch Target Selection and Overview Pages
We hear your feedback, and in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.4 Preview 2 we have addressed one of our top Developer Community issues related to CMake development in Visual Studio by revamping the selection of CMake launch targets. We have also added Overview Pages for CMake to help you get started with CMake and cross-platform development. If you’re not familiar with Visual Studio’s CMake support, be sure to check our CMake Support in Visual Studio introductory page.
Visual Studio 2019 v16.4 Preview 2, Fall Sports, and Pumpkin Spice
Here at our Redmond campus in the Pacific Northwest, we are cloaked with a brilliant display of fall colors and team members walking around in their favorite American football jerseys often with coffee in hand. While I may not have confirmed, I suspect fall flavors are hinted in the steamy beverages.
Azure Monitor adds Worker Service SDK, new ASP.NET core metrics
Application Insights from Azure Monitor empowers developers and IT professionals to observe, debug, diagnose, and improve their distributed services hosted on the cloud, on-premises, and through hybrid solutions.
Blazor Server in .NET Core 3.0 scenarios and performance
Since the release of Blazor Server with .NET Core 3.0 last month lots of folks have shared their excitement with us about being able to build client-side web UI with just .NET and C#. At the same time, we’ve also heard lots of questions about what Blazor Server is, how it relates to Blazor WebAssembly, and what scenarios Blazor Server is best suited for. Should you choose Blazor Server for your client-side web UI needs, or wait for Blazor WebAssembly? This post seeks to answer these questions, and to provide insights into how Blazor Server performs at scale and how we envision Blazor evolving in the future.
Connecting Network Cameras to Windows 10 Devices
Network cameras, which are Internet Protocol-based cameras that transmit video data over a local area network (LAN), are becoming increasingly prevalent – especially in surveillance and security scenarios. Windows now allows users to associate network cameras to their PC, enabling photo capture and streaming of video in camera applications. Currently Windows only supports ONVIF Profile S compliant cameras*, which are standards-compliant network cameras optimized for real-time streaming video capture.
Leveraging Cognitive Services to simplify inventory tracking
Who spends their summer at the Microsoft Garage New England Research & Development Center (or “NERD”)? The Microsoft Garage internship seeks out students who are hungry to learn, not afraid to try new things, and able to step out of their comfort zones when faced with ambiguous situations. The program brought together Grace Hsu from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Christopher Bunn from Northeastern University, Joseph Lai from Boston University, and Ashley Hong from Carnegie Mellon University. They chose the Garage internship because of the product focus—getting to see the whole development cycle from i...
HockeyApp Transition to Visual Studio App Center – September Update
Visual Studio App Center is closing important feature gaps as HockeyApp is transitioning to App Center later this year. See what we’ve been working on in September and learn more about what we’ve committed to on our roadmap.
Introducing the DevOps for Mobile Video Series
The entire Xamarin team and community have produced and published some amazing Xamarin content on the Xamarin Developers YouTube. Each week, find new videos of all topics to stay up to date on the latest and greatest in mobile development with Xamarin. One topic that developers have been asking for is DevOps for mobile apps. James has teamed up with good friend, Abel Wang, the DevOps expert. They have created an eight-part series covering all things DevOps for mobile developers. Tackling a wide range of topics including continuous integration, user interface testing, provisioning, distribution, and more! Be guide...
.NET Framework October 2019 Security and Quality Rollup
Today, we are releasing the October 2019 Security and Quality Rollup and Cumulative Updates for .NET Framework.
Code analysis with clang-tidy in Visual Studio
Visual Studio 2019 version 16.4 Preview 1 brings a significant improvement to the C++ code analysis experience: native support for clang-tidy, a Clang-based “linter” tool developed by the LLVM Project that delivers a variety of code improvements such as modernization and standards conformance, static analysis, and automatic formatting.
Visual Studio extensibility is better with IntelliCode
Installing the Visual Studio extension development workload presents you with a choice of optional components. And looking at the component list might leave you rather confused. Because how are various C++ components and the Class Designer especially relevant to writing extension? And where is IntelliCode?
What’s new in Azure DevOps Sprint 158
Sprint 158 just finished rolling out to all organizations and you can check out all the new features in the release notes. Here are some of the features that you can start using today.
Windows 10 SDK Preview Build 18990 available now!
Today, we released a new Windows 10 Preview Build of the SDK to be used in conjunction with Windows 10 Insider Preview (Build 18990 or greater). The Preview SDK Build 18990 contains bug fixes and under development changes to the API surface area.
Announcing TypeScript 3.7 Beta
We’re pleased to announce TypeScript 3.7 Beta, a feature-complete version of TypeScript 3.7. Between now and the final release, we’ll be fixing bugs and further improving performance and stability.
C++20’s Conditionally Explicit Constructors
is a C++20 feature for simplifying the implementation of generic types and improving compile-time performance.
Introducing .NET Core Windows Forms Designer Preview 1
We just released a GA version of .NET Core 3.0 that includes support for Windows Forms and WPF. And along with that release we’re happy to announce the first preview version of the Windows Forms Designer for .NET Core projects!
Windows 10 WinRT API Packs released
With the announcement of the release of .NET Core 3.0, we are pleased to announce we have posted on nuget.org the released versions of the Windows 10 WinRT API Pack. The Windows 10 WinRT API Pack allows your WPF or Winforms application to quickly and easily access Windows functionality like Geolocation, Windows AI, Machine Learning, Bluetooth and much more.
.NET Framework September 2019 Preview of Quality Rollup
We have released the September 2019 Preview of Quality Rollup and Cumulative Updates for .NET Framework for Windows 10
Android 10.0 General Availability
Android 10.0 introduces many features such as dark mode, live captions, foldable phone support, new wi-fi and connectivity APIs, and much more.
Azure DevOps Demo Generator is now open source
The Azure DevOps Demo Generator is a community operated service which can provision template-based projects inside your Azure DevOps organization. It was originally created for Microsoft as an educational resource supporting the Azure DevOps Labs. Although it started as a way populate lab projects, it has evolved to support integrations with various third-party DevOps tools including GitHub, Jenkins, Terraform, and many others.
Watch the latest Visual Studio extensibility videos
We have been posting several short videos about Visual Studio extensibility to our YouTube channel in the past couple of months. We chose the topics for the first videos, but now it’s time for you to tell us what videos to record next.
Tracepoints: Debug with less clutter
Have you ever accidentally shipped a log statement to production? Are you tired of cleaning up log statements while debugging? The tool to solve your problems has been here all along!
ML.NET and Model Builder at .NET Conf 2019 (Machine Learning for .NET)
We are excited today to announce updates to Model Builder and improvements in ML.NET. You can learn more in the “What’s new in ML.NET?.” session at .NET Conf.
Announcing Xamarin Hot Restart
Today at .NET Conf 2019, we announced Xamarin Hot Restart which enables you to test changes made to your app, including multi-file code edits, resources, and references, using a much faster build and deploy cycle.
The Future of C++/CLI and .NET Core 3
.NET Core 3.0 is now available and we have received a lot of questions about what that means for the future of C++/CLI. First, we would like to let everyone know that we are committed to supporting C++/CLI for .NET Core to enable easy interop between C++ codebases and .NET technologies such as WPF and Windows Forms. This support isn’t going to be ready when .NET Core 3.0 first ships, but it will be available in .NET Core 3.1 which ships with Visual Studio 2019 16.4 – roadmap.
Using the Android App Bundle with Visual Studio App Center
You might have heard about the new official publishing format for your Android apps: The Android App Bundle. Originally announced at Google I/O ‘18, this new format brings a host of new features and improvements for both you as a developer and your app’s users.
ASP.NET Core and Blazor updates in .NET Core 3.0
Today we are thrilled to announce the release of .NET Core 3.0! .NET Core 3.0 is ready for production use, and is loaded with lots of great new features for building amazing web apps with ASP.NET Core and Blazor.
Announcing Entity Framework Core 3.0 and Entity Framework 6.3 General Availability
We are extremely excited to announce the general availability of EF Core 3.0and EF 6.3 on nuget.org. The final versions of .NET Core 3.0 and ASP.NET Core 3.0 are also available now.
Announcing F# 4.7
We’re excited to announce general availability of F# 4.7 in conjunction with the .NET Core 3.0 release! In this post, I’ll show you how to get started, explain everything in F# 4.7 and give you a sneak peek at what we’re doing for the next version of F#.
Announcing .NET Core 3.0
We’re excited to announce the release of .NET Core 3.0. It includes many improvements, including adding Windows Forms and WPF, adding new JSON APIs, support for ARM64 and improving performance across the board. C# 8 is also part of this release, which includes nullable, async streams, and more patterns. F# 4.7 is included, and focused on relaxing syntax and targeting .NET Standard 2.0. You can start updating existing projects to target .NET Core 3.0 today. The release is compatible with previous versions, making updating easy.
.NET Core Support and More in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.3 – Update Now!
As we continue to deliver on our mission of any developer, any app, any platform, it’s always an exciting time on the Visual Studio team when we get to launch major features. Today we’ve released Visual Studio 2019 version 16.3 which contains support for the release of .NET Core 3.0, significant C++ improvements, and great updates for Python developers as well as TypeScript 3.6 support. You can download version 16.3 on visualstudio.com or update from the Visual Studio installer.
How to debug and profile any EXE with Visual Studio
Have you ever needed to debug or profile an executable (.exe file) that you don’t have source for or can’t build? Then the least known Visual Studio project type, the EXE project, is for you!
Release Candidate builds of Entity Framework Core 3.0 and Entity Framework 6.3 are now available
We previously said that preview 9 would be your last chance to test EF Core 3.0 and EF 6.3 before general availability. But it turns out that we made enough improvements to our libraries and across the whole of .NET Core 3.0 to justify publishing a release candidate build. Hence the packages for EF Core 3.0 RC1 and EF 6.3 RC1 were uploaded to nuget.org today.
ASP.NET Core and Blazor updates in .NET Core 3.0 Release Candidate 1
.NET Core 3.0 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is now available. This release contains only a handful of bug fixes and closely represents what we expect to release for .NET Core 3.0.
Announcing .NET Core 3.0 Release Candidate 1
Today, we’re announcing .NET Core 3.0 Release Candidate 1. Just like with Preview 9, we’ve focused on polishing .NET Core 3.0 for a final release. We are now getting very, very close. We intend to release the final version on September 23 at .NET Conf.
Get Ready for iOS 13 and Xcode 11
Support for iOS 13 and Xcode 11 to accompany Apple’s Xcode Gold Master (GM) release was just announced! Additionally, we have also just published updated documentation to help you quickly get started with all the new features. Now, build your Xamarin.iOS (and Xamarin.Forms for iOS) apps with Xcode 11 GM and submit your iOS 13, tvOS 13 or watchOS 6 apps to the Apple App Store.
Xamarin.Forms 4.3 Prerelease and the CarouselView Challenge
Today we’re announcing the first prerelease of Xamarin.Forms 4.3! The focus of this release is the new CollectionView, a successor to the current ListView. Back in April, we asked you to participate in a CollectionView challenge. The purpose of the challenge was to gather feedback from you, the community, to make certain that the CollectionView can provide out-of-the-box functionality that meets your biggest needs.
DRED v1.2 supports PIX marker and event strings in Auto-Breadcrumbs
In Windows 10 1903, DRED 1.1 provided D3D12 developers with the ability to diagnose device removed events using GPU page fault data and automatic breadcrumbs. As a result, TDR debugging pain has been greatly reduced. Hooray! Unfortunately, developers still struggle to pinpoint which specific GPU workloads triggered the error. So, we’ve made a few tweaks in DRED in the Windows 10 20H1 Release Preview. Specifically, DRED 1.2 adds ‘Context Data’ to auto-breadcrumbs by integrating PIX marker and event strings into the auto-breadcrumb data. With context data, developers can more precisely determine where a GPU fault o...
Keep Up to Date With the Latest Xamarin Docs
The Xamarin documentation is the best source of information for building apps with Xamarin and Xamarin.Forms. Follow the quickstart to build your first Android or iOS app with Xamarin.Forms. Then complete the tutorials to learn more about common mobile app concepts.
.NET Core September 2019 Updates – 2.1.13 and 2.2.7
Today, we are releasing the .NET Core September 2019 Update. These updates contain security and reliability fixes. See the individual release notes for details on updated packages.
Say hello to the new Visual Studio terminal!
Building on the momentum from the recently announced Developer PowerShell, we are excited to share the first preview of the new Visual Studio terminal. This new preview experience is part of Visual Studio version 16.3 Preview 3.
GC Perf Infrastructure – Part 0
In this blog entry and some future ones I will be showing off functionalities that our new GC perf infrastructure provides. Andy and I have been working on it (he did all the work; I merely played the consultant role). We will be open sourcing it soon and I wanted to give you some examples of using it and you can add these to your repertoire of perf analysis techniques when it’s available.
C++20 Concepts Are Here in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.3
C++20 Concepts are now supported for the first time in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.3 Preview 2. This includes both the compiler and standard library support.
HockeyApp Transition to Visual Studio App Center – August Update
Visual Studio App Center is closing important feature gaps as HockeyApp is transitioning to App Center later this year. See what we’ve been working on in August and learn more about what we’ve committed to on our roadmap.
Refactoring made easy with IntelliCode!
Have you ever found yourself refactoring your code and making the same or similar changes in multiple locations? Maybe you thought about making a regular expression so you could search and replace, but the effort to do that was too great? Eventually you probably resigned yourself to the time-intensive, error prone task of going through the code manually.
Announcing Entity Framework Core 3.0 Preview 9 and Entity Framework 6.3 Preview 9
The Preview 9 versions of the EF Core 3.0 package and the EF 6.3 package are now available for download from nuget.org.
Boost Performance with Compiled Bindings in Xamarin.Forms
Data binding is at the core of every Xamarin.Forms application. It enabled developers to easily bridge their user interface with their code behind form a simple markup. Data binding also simplifies user interactions and updates to the user interface automatigical! With all this awesome comes with some trade-offs. Xamarin.Forms has to analyze and resolve each binding, which can take precious CPU cycles. This is where compiled bindings come in and help boost performance when using data binding.
ASP.NET Core and Blazor updates in .NET Core 3.0 Preview 9
.NET Core 3.0 Preview 9 is now available and it contains a number of improvements and updates to ASP.NET Core and Blazor.
Announcing .NET Core 3.0 Preview 9
Today, we’re announcing .NET Core 3.0 Preview 9. Just like with Preview 8, we’ve focused on polishing .NET Core 3.0 for a final release and aren’t adding new features. If these final builds seem less exciting than earlier previews, that’s by design.
.NET Framework August 30, 2019 Cumulative Update for Windows 10 version 1903
The August 2019 Cumulative Update for .NET Framework 3.5 and 4.8 on Windows 10 version 1903 was released.
Hardware Intrinsics in .NET Core
Several years ago, we decided that it was time to support SIMD code in .NET. We introduced the System.Numerics namespace with , , , , and related types. These types expose a general-purpose API for creating, accessing, and operating on them using hardware vector instructions (when available). They also provide a software fallback for when the hardware does not provide the appropriate instructions. This enabled a number of common algorithms to be vectorized, often with only minor refactorings. However, the generality of this approach made it difficult for programs to take full advantage of all vector instructions ...
Join us for .NET Conf 2019, Sept 23-25
.NET Conf is back again this year and will be live streaming to a device near you September 23-25 on www.dotnetconf.net! .NET Conf is a FREE, 3 day virtual developer event co-organized by the .NET community and Microsoft. This year .NET Core 3.0 will launch at .NET Conf 2019! Come celebrate and learn about the new release. You won’t want to miss this one.
Announcing ML.NET 1.4 Preview and Model Builder updates (Machine Learning for .NET)
We are excited to announce ML.NET 1.4 Preview and updates to Model Builder and CLI. ML.NET is an open-source and cross-platform machine learning framework for .NET developers. ML.NET also includes Model Builder (a simple UI tool) and CLI to make it super easy to build custom Machine Learning (ML) models using Automated Machine Learning (AutoML).
Modernizing iOS Apps for Dark Mode with Xamarin
With iOS 13, Apple introduces dark mode: A system-wide option for light and dark themes. iOS users may now choose the theme or allow iOS to dynamically change appearance based on the environment and time. Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Forms deliver native iOS experiences to keep your applications looking shiny and fresh no matter what time of day.
Announcing TypeScript 3.6
Today we’re happy to announce the availability of TypeScript 3.6! For those unfamiliar, TypeScript is a language that builds on JavaScript by adding optional static types. These types can be checked by the TypeScript compiler to catch common errors in your programs (like misspelling properties and calling functions the wrong way). Tools like the TypeScript compiler and Babel can then be used to transform TypeScript code that uses all the latest and greatest standard features to standards-compliant ECMAScript code that will work on any browser or runtime (even much older ones that support ES3 or ES5).
How the .NET Team uses Azure Pipelines to produce Docker Images
Producing Docker images for .NET might not seem like that big of a deal. Once you’ve got a Dockerfile defined, just run “docker build“ and “docker push“ and you’re done, right? Then just rinse and repeat when new versions of .NET are released and that should be all that’s needed. Well, it’s not quite that simple.
Redesigning Configuration Refresh for Azure App Configuration
Since its inception, the .NET Core configuration provider for Azure App Configuration has provided the capability to monitor changes and sync them to the configuration within a running application. We recently redesigned this functionality to allow for on-demand refresh of the configuration. The new design paves the way for smarter applications that only refresh the configuration when necessary. As a result, inactive applications no longer have to monitor for configuration changes unnecessarily.
Vcpkg: 2019.07 Update
The 2019.07 update of vcpkg, a tool that helps you manage C and C++ libraries on Windows, Linux, and macOS, is now available. This update is a summary of the new functionality and improvements made to vcpkg over the past month. Last month was the first time we created a vcpkg release (Vcpkg: 2019.06 Update).
Getting Started with GitHub Actions in Visual Studio
GitHub Actions uses a clean new syntax for expressing workflows based on YAML scripts—so you can edit, reuse, share, and fork them like code. By including actions in your repositories, others would be able to easily test and build projects using the same actions used on the original projects.
Visual Studio Tips and Tricks: Increasing your Productivity for .NET
The .NET team is constantly thinking of new ways to make developers more productive. We’ve been working hard over the past year to take the feedback you’ve sent us and turn it into tools that you want! In this post I’ll cover some of the latest productivity features available in Visual Studio 2019 Preview.
Build and Debug MySQL on Linux with Visual Studio 2019
The MySQL Server Team recently shared on their blog how to use Visual Studio 2019 to edit, build, and debug MySQL on a remote Linux server. This leverages Visual Studio’s native support for CMake and allows them to use Visual Studio as a front-end while outsourcing all the “heavy lifting” (compilation, linking, running) to a remote Linux machine.
Xamarin.Forms 4.2.0 Hits GA & CollectionView Updates
Today, we are excited to announce that Xamarin.Forms 4.2.0 is now available in stable. This release continues the 4.0 series with improvements to Shell, community enhancements, performance enhancements, and bug fixes. There are some sweet new enhancements that you can take advantage of right now in 4.2.0.
Get more fresh content on Visual Studio’s YouTube channel
Whether you like short how-to videos or longer deep dives, the Visual Studio YouTube channel has something for you. With fresh content published several times a week, there are always new and interesting videos to help you stay current on everything Visual Studio.
Now available: Azure DevOps Server 2019 Update 1 RTW
Today, we are announcing the availability of Azure DevOps Server 2019 Update 1. Azure DevOps Server brings the Azure DevOps experience to self-hosted environments. Customers with strict requirements for compliance can run Azure DevOps Server on-premises and have full control over the underlying infrastructure.
The PowerShell you know and love now with a side of Visual Studio
While we know that many of you enjoy, and rely on the Visual Studio Command Prompt, some of you told us that you would prefer to have a PowerShell version of the tool. We are happy to share that in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.2, we added a new Developer PowerShell!
C++ Cross-Platform Development with Visual Studio 2019 version 16.3: vcpkg, CMake configuration, remote headers, and WSL
In Visual Studio 2019 you can target both Windows and Linux from the comfort of a single IDE. Visual Studio’s native support for CMake lets you open any folder containing C++ code and a CMakeLists.txt file directly in Visual Studio to edit, build, and debug your CMake project on Windows, Linux, and the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Visual Studio’s MSBuild-based Linux support allows you to create and debug console applications that execute on a remote Linux system or WSL. For either of these scenarios, the Linux development with C++ workload is required.
Announcing the general availability of Python support in Azure Functions
Python support for Azure Functions is now generally available and ready to host your production workloads across data science and machine learning, automated resource management, and more. You can now develop Python 3.6 apps to run on the cross-platform, open-source Functions 2.0 runtime. These can be published as code or Docker containers to a Linux-based serverless hosting platform in Azure. This stack powers the solution innovations of our early adopters, with customers such as General Electric Aviation and TCF Bank already using Azure Functions written in Python for their serverless production workloads. Our ...
Find solutions faster by analyzing crash dumps in Visual Studio
When unexpected crashes occur in your managed application you are often left with little evidence of the issue; capturing and analyzing memory dumps may be your last best option. Thankfully Visual Studio is a great tool for analyzing your apps memory dumps! In this post we show you how easy it is to get important insights from a crash dump, and the steps to resolve the issue using Visual Studio.
.NET Core and systemd
In preview7 a new package was added to the set of packages that enables integration with systemd. For the Windows focused, systemd allows similar functionality to Windows Services, there is a post on how to do what we discuss here for Windows Services in this post. This work was contributed by Tom Deseyn from Red Hat. In this post we will create a .NET Core app that runs as a systemd service. The integration makes systemd aware when the application has started/is stopping, and configures logs to be sent in a way that journald (the logging system of systemd) understands log priorities.
Announcing TypeScript 3.6 RC
Today we’re happy to announce the availability of the release candidate of TypeScript 3.6. This release candidate is intended to be fairly close to the full release, and will stabilize for the next few weeks leading up to our official release.
Productivity Improvements for C++: New Default Colorization, Template Argument Filtering in Call Stack Window, and IntelliCode On-By-Default
In Visual Studio 2019 version 16.3 Preview 2 we’ve introduced a new default semantic colorization scheme for C++. For a long time, many of the default colors were simply black. However, colorization can help you quickly understand the structure of code at a glance. To take advantage of this, we’ve created two new color schemes, and of course you can still customize your colors further by typing “Change font” in the Ctrl + Q search bar.
Code, Recent Items, and Template Search In Visual Studio
We are introducing the ability to search for code, recent items, and templates through the new search experience in Visual Studio. These features can all be accessed by one single shortcut (Ctrl+Q) and are currently available in our Preview build (https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/preview/). They will be available in Visual Studio 2019, version 16.3, targeted for the end of September.
Introducing Boots: Streamline Xamarin Continuous Integration
Many Xamarin developers take advantage of Azure DevOps or Visual Studio App Center to build and release their mobile applications. Each environment has its own installation of Mono, Xamarin, and everything you would need to build your Xamarin project.
Announcing .NET Core 3.0 Preview 8
Today, we are announcing .NET Core 3.0 Preview 8. Just like with Preview 7, we’ve focused on polishing .NET Core 3.0 for a final release and are not adding new features. If these final previews seem anti-climatic, that’s by design.
New C++ Core Check Rules
The C++ Core Guidelines Checker receives three new rules with the release of Visual Studio version 16.3 Preview 2. In addition, some warnings published in the warnings.h that ships with Visual Studio have been moved or renamed.
ASP.NET Core and Blazor updates in .NET Core 3.0 Preview 8
.NET Core 3.0 Preview 8 is now available and it includes a bunch of new updates to ASP.NET Core and Blazor.
Azure SDK August 2019 preview and a dive into consistency
The second previews of Azure SDKs which follow the latest Azure API Guidelines and Patterns are now available (.Net, Java, JavaScript, Python). These previews contain bug fixes, new features, and additional work towards guidelines adherence.
Side-by-side Minor Version MSVC Toolsets in Visual Studio 2019
Visual Studio 2019 version 16.1 Preview 3 ships with the first side-by-side minor versions of the v142 MSVC toolset. We first shipped minor side-by-side versions of MSVC toolsets with Visual Studio 2017, but a few things have changed in 2019. This post covers what’s new; primarily more granular versions of the toolsets in the installer and support for CMake projects.
Public Preview of XAML Hot Reload for Xamarin.Forms
As a developer, we often get into a cycle of running an app, noticing that some adjustment needs to be made, stopping the app, estimating the adjusted values, and then repeating the whole process over again to see if the estimate was correct. We call this the “inner development loop,” and it can quickly become quite tedious.
Azure SignalR Service now supports Event Grid!
Since we GA’ed Azure SignalR Service in last September, serverless has become a very popular use case in Azure SignalR Service and is used by many customers. Unlike the traditional SignalR application which requires a server to host the hub, in serverless scenario no server is needed, instead you can directly send messages to clients through REST APIs or our management SDK which can easily be used in serverless code like Azure Functions.
Game performance improvements in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.2
This spring Gratian Lup described in his blog post the improvements for C++ game development in Visual Studio 2019. From Visual Studio 2019 version 16.0 to Visual Studio 2019 version 16.2 we’ve made some more improvements. On the Infiltrator Demo we’ve got 2–3% performance wins for the most CPU-intensive parts of the game.
Async loaded .NET projects may impact Visual Studio extensions
In Visual Studio 2019 version 16.3, the CSProj project system (C#/VB non-SDK style) introduces a new way of loading called Partial Load Mode (PLM). After the solution loads, the project system is doing design time builds in the background, leaving the UI responsive and interactive. However, for the time it takes to run the design time build, certain features may not be working as they used to. Extenders, read on.
Try out Nullable Reference Types
With the release of .NET Core 3.0 Preview 7, C# 8.0 is considered "feature complete". That means that the biggest feature of them all, Nullable Reference Types, is also locked down behavior-wise for the .NET Core release. It will continue to improve after C# 8.0, but it is now considered stable with the rest of C# 8.0.
What’s New for Xamarin Developers in Visual Studio 2019 Previews
Today, Visual Studio 2019 version 16.3 Preview 2 and Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.3 Preview 2 released with many improvements for mobile developers in Visual Studio. This release includes major productivity enhancements such as XAML Hot Reload for Xamarin.Forms and improvements to the XAML Previewer for Xamarin.Forms. As well as support for the latest Android Q APIs.
Update on .NET Standard adoption
It’s about two years ago that I announced .NET Standard 2.0. Since then we’ve been working hard to increase the set of .NET Standard-based libraries for .NET. This includes many of the BCL components, such as the Windows Compatibility Pack, but also other popular libraries, such as the JSON.NET, the Azure SDK, or the AWS SDK. In this blog post, I’ll share some thoughts and numbers about the .NET ecosystem and .NET Standard.
Add Contact Features in 4 Lines of Code with Xamarin.Essentials
Integrating contact functionality has been a common task that I have been asked to develop for mobile apps over the years. This has ranged from a full contacts directory to simple contact information inside an app. Most requested features include the ability to call the contact, send an sms or email, and navigate to a location. In the past, I would have to implement several native APIs myself or install several libraries that could provide the functionality. Today, with Xamarin.Essentials all of this functionality is available in a single library and can be implemented in just 4 lines of code! So, let’s build a c...
Visual Studio 2019 version 16.3 Preview 2 and Visual Studio for Mac version 8.3 Preview 2 Released!
Visual Studio version 16.3 Preview 2 and Visual Studio for Mac version 8.3 Preview 2 are available. Because many of the features in this release are a response to Developer Community feedback, we are excited to share our changes. First of all, the latest Preview versions both PC and Mac are available to download from VisualStudio.com. You can also upgrade internally by clicking the notification bell within Visual Studio 2019. Likewise, within the Visual Studio 2019 for Mac IDE, click the Visual Studio > Check for Updates menu item. Our release notes contain many more details, so make sure to take a look.
Announcing WPF and WinForms Support in Visual Studio App Center
A few years ago, the Visual Studio App Center team set off with a big mission: to help developers focus on building better apps. We are striving to deliver the best continuous integration, delivery, and monitoring tools for mobile developers, but also thinking of a future where App Center supports more than just mobile apps. Today, we’re excited to announce the preview release of the App Center WPF and Windows Forms SDK, enabling support for diagnostics, analytics and distribution for apps targeting .NET Framework. Here’s a quick look at what you can do in App Center to get started today.
Preview Features in Visual Studio
The Preview Features page under Tools > Options > Environment has a new look! We introduced the Preview Features page so that you can easily find these capabilities and be able to control their enablement. The new layout provides more information and an opportunity to give feedback on the features. While these features are in development, you can disable any of these features if you run into issues. We also encourage you to provide feedback on the capabilities or any issues you find. Some features you may find on this page includes ones in early development that affect existing functionality, ones that are...
Improving .NET Core installation in Visual Studio and on Windows
Visual Studio 2019 version 16.3 and .NET Core 3.0 Preview 7 improve the installation experience of .NET Core on Windows. The goal is to reduce the number of .NET Core versions that might be on a machine. The improvements are based on customer feedback and our own experiences as well as laying the groundwork for future improvements.
Optimize your Xamarin.Android Builds
Xamarin.Android has a lot of nobs and levers when it comes to configuring your project. For example, do you know what the best settings are in Debug mode for quick builds? Or what to do in Release mode to make your APK as small as possible or have the fastest startup time? In this post, we will look into how you can optimize your Xamarin.Android builds to give you the best results for your mobile apps.
Windows 10 SDK Preview Build 18950 available now!
Today, we released a new Windows 10 Preview Build of the SDK to be used in conjunction with Windows 10 Insider Preview (Build 18950 or greater). The Preview SDK Build 18950 contains bug fixes and under development changes to the API surface area.
TraceProcessor 0.2.0
TraceProcessor version 0.2.0 is now available on NuGet with the following package ID: Microsoft.Windows.EventTracing.Processing.All
Introducing Azure Dedicated Host
We are excited to announce the preview of Azure Dedicated Host, a new Azure service that enables you to run your organization’s Linux and Windows virtual machines on single-tenant physical servers. Azure Dedicated Hosts provide you with visibility and control to help address corporate compliance and regulatory requirements. We are extending Azure Hybrid Benefit to Azure Dedicated Hosts, so you can save money by using on-premises Windows Server and SQL Server licenses with Software Assurance or qualifying subscription licenses. Azure Dedicated Host is in preview in most Azure regions starting today.
Visual Studio App Center, User Identity, & Shared Devices
One of the design goals for the Visual Studio App Center SDK is to simplify things for developers, making it easy for them to use App Center in their mobile (and desktop) apps. Because of this, the SDK does a lot of work for developers, especially at startup whenever the app lets the SDK know which App Center services are in play.
Theming in Visual Studio just got a lot easier
Sometimes the default themes for Visual Studio just aren’t enough. Lucky for us, we’ve just redesigned the process of creating and importing custom themes.
Improving the Performance of Standard Library Functions
In Visual Studio 2019 version 16.2 we improved the codegen of several standard library functions. Guided by your feedback on Developer Community (Inlining std::lldiv and Improved codegen for std::fmin, std::fmax, std::round, std::trunc) we focused on the variants of standard division (, , ) and .
Smarter Member List Filtering for C++
We are always looking for ways to make you more productive while coding in Visual Studio. In Visual Studio 2019 version 16.2, we have created a smarter, more relevant Member List. Specifically, we now apply method filtering based on type qualifiers. To illustrate this, consider the following example:
Inlining Decisions in Visual Studio (C++)
My name is Terry Mahaffey and I work on the code generation team in MSVC. Lately I’ve been doing some work on our inliner and I wanted to give a brief introduction to it before later diving into some of the changes we’ll be shipping.
HttpRepl: A command-line tool for interacting with RESTful HTTP services
The ASP.NET team has built a command-line tool called HttpRepl. It lets you browse and invoke HTTP services in a similar way to working with files and folders. You give it a starting point (a base URL) and then you can execute commands like “dir” and “cd” to navigate your way around the API:
Status on Visual Studio feature suggestions
Visual Studio receives over 500 feature suggestions from customers every month on the Developer Community website. Handling that amount is a huge effort and we’d like to share with you how we handle this volume and the steps that we take to respond to them all. What happens to suggestion tickets after they’re opened, how many make it into Visual Studio, and what happens to the rest? Let’s find out.
MSVC Backend Updates in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.2
In Visual Studio 2019 version 16.2 we continue to improve the C++ backend with build throughput improvements and new and improved optimizations. These build on top of our MSVC backend improvements in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.0 which we previously announced. We will be following up on many of the improvements here with their own blog posts.
Introducing AndroidX for Xamarin
The Android Support Library has had a long history of over the last 7 years providing backwards compatibility to Android framework APIs. Over the years, this library has grown in adoption as the majority of Android apps in the Google Play Store use the Support Library in some fashion today.
Improved Linker Fundamentals in Visual Studio 2019
On the C++ team we’ve heard loud and clear from users that build times are a pain point. So we’ve continued our focus on improving the step, linking, that dominates F5 build times. Fast F5 build times, or iteration build times, are a key contributor to developer productivity and we felt that there was a large opportunity so we narrowed in on changes that we felt could move the needle 2x or more. This is on top of the significant improvements we made to the tool chain to speed up link times in the VS 2019 16.0 release. Let me give a teaser of the kinds of wins we were able to achieve.
Faster Startup Times With Startup Tracing On Android
If you use AOT today, it improves startup times drastically, but you suffer in APK size bloat. This, unfortunately, is not a bargain that most Android applications can take in this modern-day as we must keep our users at the forefront of our decisions. They also ensure that they don’t have to download a large APK just to use our services. There must be a better way forward we thought.
Now available: Azure DevOps Server 2019 Update 1, Release Candidate 2
Today, we are announcing the release of Azure DevOps Server 2019 Update 1 RC2. This is our last planned prerelease before our final release of Azure DevOps Server 2019 Update 1. This second release candidate includes some bug fixes since RC1. You can upgrade from Azure DevOps Server 2019 Update 1 RC1 or previous versions of Azure DevOps Server or TFS. You can find the full details in our release notes.
Announcing GitLab Support for Visual Studio App Center
In Visual Studio App Center, a first step to building your app is to select a source provider. As a crucial step in the build process, we are always hoping to make this as seamless as possible. To continue this mission, we are excited to announce the completion of our top feature request for the past few months – support for GitLab.com as a source provider! Here’s what it looks like:
Caching and faster artifacts in Azure Pipelines
I’m excited to announce the public previews of pipeline caching and pipeline artifacts in Azure Pipelines. Together, these technologies can make every run of your pipeline faster by accelerating the transfer of artifacts between jobs and stages, and by caching the results of common operations like package restores.
Visual Studio 2019 version 16.2 Generally Available and 16.3 Preview 1
Today we are making Visual Studio 2019 version 16.2 generally available, as well as Preview 1 of version 16.3. You can download both versions from VisualStudio.com. If you already have Preview installed, you can alternatively click the notification bell from inside Visual Studio to update. We’ve highlighted some notable features below, but you can also see a list of all the changes in the current release notes or the Preview release notes.
Skill up on Visual Studio 2019 with Pluralsight
With the launch of Visual Studio 2019 in April, we announced having partnered with Pluralsight to provide new training content to help you build your skills with Visual Studio 2019. We’re thrilled to announce that all 10 courses, spanning over 14 hours of content in the Visual Studio 2019 Path on Pluralsight, are now available. You’ll also be able to benchmark your current skill level with a Pluralsight Skill IQ assessment, which will offer course recommendations.
Announcing Entity Framework Core 3.0 Preview 7 and Entity Framework 6.3 Preview 7
Today, we are making new previews of EF Core 3.0 and EF 6.3 available on nuget.org. .NET Core 3.0 Preview 7 and ASP.NET Core 3.0 Preview 7 were also made available today.
Announcing .NET Core 3.0 Preview 7
Today, we are announcing .NET Core 3.0 Preview 7. We’ve transitioned from creating new features to polishing the release. Expect a singular focus on quality for the remaining preview releases.
ASP.NET Core and Blazor updates in .NET Core 3.0 Preview 7
.NET Core 3.0 Preview 7 is now available and it includes a bunch of new updates to ASP.NET Core and Blazor.
Vcpkg: 2019.06 Update
The 2019.06 update of vcpkg, a tool that helps you manage C and C++ libraries on Windows, Linux, and MacOS, is now available. This is the first time we’ve created a vcpkg release on our GitHub repository. This update is designed to bring you a summary of the new functionality and improvements made to vcpkg over about a month’s time. The 2019.06 update covers the month of June.
Announcing TypeScript 3.6 Beta
Today we’re happy to announce the availability of TypeScript 3.6 Beta. This beta is intended to be a feature-complete version of TypeScript 3.6. In the coming weeks we’ll be working on bugs and improving performance and stability for our release candidate, and eventually the full release.
Introducing PowerShell as .NET Global Tool
PowerShell is very suitable for CI/CD scenarios due to its easy and well understood scripting paradigm, and its cross-platform support makes it great for building and testing cross-platform applications. A .NET Global Tool is a special NuGet package that contains a console application.
Making it easier to bring your Linux based web apps to Azure App Service
Application development has radically changed over the years. From having to host all the physical hardware hosting the app and its dependences on-premises, to moving to a model where the hardware is hosted by external companies yet still managed by the users on to hosting your apps on a fully managed platform where all hardware and software management is done by the hosting provider. And then finally over to a full serverless solution where no resources need to be set up to run applications.
Announcing ML.NET 1.2 and Model Builder updates (Machine Learning for .NET)
We are excited to announce ML.NET 1.2 and updates to Model Builder and the CLI. ML.NET is an open-source and cross-platform machine learning framework for .NET developers. ML.NET also includes Model Builder (a simple UI tool for Visual Studio) and the ML.NET CLI (Command-line interface) to make it super easy to build custom Machine Learning (ML) models using Automated Machine Learning (AutoML).
.NET Framework July 2019 Security and Quality Rollup
Today, we are releasing the July 2019 Cumulative Update, Security and Quality Rollup, and Security Only Update for .NET Framework.
Azure Pipelines integration with Jira Software
Some teams prefer to have a choice of tools for configuring development pipelines, and that is most effective when the tools are integrated and users can retain context as they move between systems for details.
Create and manage Azure Pipelines from the command line
We recently introduced a unified YAML experience in Azure Pipelines where you can configure pipelines to do CI, CD or CI and CD together. Over the past few months we have been building capability to manage YAML backed pipelines from the command line to cater to developers who prefer working from the command line interface or require commands to automate set up and management. We are excited to announce the availability of command in the Azure DevOps extension for developers who want to create and manage YAML backed Azure Pipelines from the CLI. The command group allows you to , , , , and a pipeline, enabling ...
Snppts – Beautiful UI Snippets for Xamarin.Forms
Features like , and the control gives developers the power to bring their ideas to life and create beautiful user interfaces. A lot of people in the community are creating awesome things with these. Although, with so much happening sometimes their efforts go unfound. This is why Snppts was created.
Resolve code issues in live apps running in Azure Kubernetes Services with the Snapshot Debugger
With ASP.NET core, my life as a Windows-first developer just broadened dramatically. I can now develop apps without being tied to a single platform. Having spent most of my career as a “Windows only” developer, I am now taking on the task of redesigning a twenty-year-old, IIS based service, so that it could be built on a Mac and hosted on Linux in Azure.
Participate in the Developer Economics Survey
The Developer Economics Q2 2019 survey is here in its 17th edition to shed light on the future of the software industry. Every year more than 40,000 developers around the world participate in this survey, so this is a chance to be part of something big, voice your thoughts, and make your own contribution to the developer community.
Xamarin.Essentials welcomes tvOS, watchOS, and Tizen
This week marked the launch of Xamarin.Essentials 1.2 packed full of new enhancements and optimizations. The main highlight is the new file preview features enabling you to send, view, and email files from a single cross-platform API. We are actively seeking feedback on these features. So be sure to chat with the team on Gitter or leave an issue on GitHub.
Clang/LLVM Support for MSBuild Projects
Visual Studio 2019 version 16.2 Preview 3 includes built-in Clang/LLVM support for MSBuild projects. In our last release, we announced support for Clang/LLVM for CMake. In the latest Preview of Visual Studio, we have extended that support to also include MSBuild projects. While in most cases we recommend using the MSVC compiler, we are committed to making Visual Studio one of the most comprehensive IDEs on Windows. You may want to use Clang instead if you are developing cross platform code, especially if it already depends on Clang or GCC extensions. You can now use Clang/LLVM to target both Windows and Linux usi...
Checklist for writing great Visual Studio extensions
Great Visual Studio extensions share a few key features that sets them apart from the rest. They look and feel well crafted, are performant and reliable, do what they advertise to perfection, and blend in naturally among Visual Studio’s own features.
Announcing XAML Hot Reload for Xamarin.Forms
Today at Xamarin Developer Summit, we announced XAML Hot Reload for Xamarin.Forms, which enables you to make changes to your XAML UI and see them reflected live, without requiring another build and deploy.
A brand new course on the fundamentals of scripting and programming for game development using C#, VisualStudio and Unity
We are excited to announce a refresh of our popular beginner and intermediate scripting tutorial videos, available free on Unity Learn. We teamed up with Microsoft to bring Unity game developers tutorials that will help you get started with the fundamentals of scripting and programming for using C#, Microsoft Visual Studio and Unity 2019.
Previewing Azure SDKs following new Azure SDK API Standards
Today we’re happy to share a new set of libraries for working with Azure Storage, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Key Vault, and Azure Event Hubs in Java, Python, JavaScript or TypeScript, and .NET. These libraries provide access to new service features, and represent the first step towards applying a new set of standards across the Azure SDKs that we believe will make the libraries easier to learn and integrate into your software. You can get these libraries today from your favorite package manager, and we would love to hear your feedback on GitHub. To get started follow the instructions linked below:
.NET Core July 2019 Updates – 2.1.12 and 2.2.6
Today, we are releasing the .NET Core July 2019 Update. These updates contain security and reliability fixes. See the individual release notes for details on updated packages.
Write Better Code Faster with Roslyn Analyzers
Roslyn, the .NET compiler platform, helps you catch bugs even before you run your code. One example is Roslyn’s spellcheck analyzer that is built into Visual Studio. Let’s say you are creating a static method and misspelled the word static as statc. You will be able to see this spelling error before you run your code because Roslyn can produce warnings in your code as you type even before you’ve finished the line. In other words, you don’t have to build your code to find out that you made a mistake.
Exploring the Visual Studio App Center Data Roadmap
At Build 2019, we released App Center Data in public preview after starting development earlier this year. The App Center Data service enables you to easily scale, persist, and sync your data in the cloud for your mobile applications. App Center Data takes the work out of managing your data across different devices and platforms. Segmenting your data and associating it with a user’s identity can be easily done in a few steps. You can easily curate an offline experience in your app, performing both offline reads and writes with our easy-to-use modular App Center client SDKs.
A brand new course on the fundamentals of scripting and programming for game development using C#, VisualStudio and Unity
We are excited to announce a refresh of our popular beginner and intermediate scripting tutorial videos, available free on Unity Learn. We teamed up with Microsoft to bring Unity game developers tutorials that will help you get started with the fundamentals of scripting and programming for using C#, Microsoft Visual Studio and Unity 2019.
Previewing Azure SDKs following new Azure SDK API Standards
Today we’re happy to share a new set of libraries for working with Azure Storage, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Key Vault, and Azure Event Hubs in Java, Python, JavaScript or TypeScript, and .NET. These libraries provide access to new service features, and represent the first step towards applying a new set of standards across the Azure SDKs that we believe will make the libraries easier to learn and integrate into your software. You can get these libraries today from your favorite package manager, and we would love to hear your feedback on GitHub. To get started follow the instructions linked below:
iOS 13 Preview Release Now Available
Today, we are excited to share our first preview release focused on support for iOS 13 and Xcode 11! With today’s preview, you can begin building applications using Xcode 11 and start integrating new APIs for iOS 13. APIs such as “Sign in with Apple”, along with support for watchOS 6, tvOS 13, and macOS 10.15.
Xamarin.Forms 4.1.0 Stable Now Available
Today we are happy to announce Xamarin.Forms 4.1 availability on NuGet. Our 3.0.0 series of releases focused heavily on growing Xamarin.Forms by filling in the gaps. We learned that this should be available by default and want to continue effectively growing Xamarin.Forms to best meet your needs and improve productivity. Thank you for filling out surveys, scheduling discussion time, sharing your projects, and collaborating through GitHub!
Customize object displays in the Visual Studio debugger YOUR way
Have you ever stared at objects in a debugger window and wished that you could view those objects by something other than their type? I certainly have! Expanding items to determine each one’s identity can become tiresome very fast. Ideally, it would be great to quickly locate them by a particular property value. Luckily for us, Visual Studio has two not-so-well-known attributes known as DebuggerDisplay for managed users, and Natvis for native C++ users. These attributes let you customize how you view objects in debugger windows such as the Watch, Autos, Locals, and datatips!
Using Azure Search custom skills to create personalized job recommendations
The Microsoft Worldwide Learning Innovation lab is an idea incubation lab within Microsoft that focuses on developing personalized learning and career experiences. One of the recent experiences that the lab developed focused on offering skills-based personalized job recommendations. Research shows that job search is one of the most stressful times in someone’s life. Everyone remembers at some point looking for their next career move and how stressful it was to find a job that aligns with their various skills.
JSON Web Token and React Native Support Arrives to Visual Studio App Center Auth
We shipped App Center Auth in early preview on May 7, and it’s been an exciting month and a half since our launch! During this time we’ve actively engaged with our developers and rolled out a couple of product improvements based on your feedback.
Styling for Multiple Device Resolutions
A few months ago we received a request from one of our customers which required us to develop and test an application on multiple device resolutions. While doing this we realized that we were doing something wrong in our development process.
Xamarin and .NET Community Developer Events in July
Jumpstart your next mobile development project by networking with your local community and getting the latest updates about Xamarin and .NET related technologies. Discover upcoming developer events happening this July, including conferences and virtual opportunities around the world!
Configuring a Server-side Blazor app with Azure App Configuration
With .NET Core 3.0 Preview 6, we added authentication & authorization support to server-side Blazor apps. It only takes a matter of seconds to wire up an app to Azure Active Directory with support for single or multiple organizations. Once the project is created, it contains all the configuration elements in its to function. This is great, but in a team environment – or in a distributed topology – configuration files lead to all sorts of problems. In this post, we’ll take a look at how we can extract those configuration values out of JSON files and into an Azure App Configuration instance, where they can be ...
Auditing for Azure DevOps is now in Public Preview
We’re excited to announce that Auditing for Azure DevOps is now available for all organizations as a Public Preview! As Azure DevOps keeps growing and is adopted by enterprises, our customers have been demanding for the ability to monitor activities and changes throughout their organizations.
Visual Studio tips and tricks
Whether you are new or have been using Visual Studio for years, there are a bunch of tips and tricks that can make you more productive. We’ve been sharing tips on Twitter using the #vstip hashtag for a while, and this is a collection of the best ones so far.
Migrating MacOS Apps to 64-bit Before the Apple Transition
Apple has been moving towards 64-bit only applications on macOS for a number of releases. Last June, Apple started requiring Apps on the macOS App Store to be 64-bit only and macOS 10.13.4 and above prompt when launching 32-bit applications.
Simplify Your Code With Rocket Science: C++20’s Spaceship Operator
C++20 adds a new operator, affectionately dubbed the “spaceship” operator: . There was a post awhile back by our very own Simon Brand detailing some information regarding this new operator along with some conceptual information about what it is and does. The goal of this post is to explore some concrete applications of this strange new operator and its associated counterpart, the (yes it has been changed, for the better!), all while providing some guidelines for its use in everyday code.
Announcing the general availability of Azure premium files
Today, we are excited to announce the general availability of Azure premium files for customers optimizing their cloud-based file shares on Azure. Premium files offers a higher level of performance built on solid-state drives (SSD) for fully managed file services in Azure
Announcing ML.NET 1.1 and Model Builder updates (Machine Learning for .NET)
ML.NET is an open-source and cross-platform machine learning framework (Windows, Linux, macOS) for .NET developers.
Microsoft’s MT-DNN Achieves Human Performance Estimate on General Language Understanding Evaluation (GLUE) Benchmark
Understanding natural language is one of the longest running goals of AI, which can trace back to 1950s when the Turing test defines an “intelligent” machine. In recent years, we have observed promising results in many Natural Language Understanding (NLU) tasks both in academia and industry, as the breakthroughs in deep learning are applied to NLU, such as the BERT model developed by Google in 2018.
Get Started with Free Xamarin Training on Microsoft Learn
Learn how to build cross-platform mobile applications with the new Xamarin.Forms content on Microsoft Learn. The new and completely free platform where you can earn points and badges, level up, and advance your skills.
Faster Xamarin.Android Builds & Smaller Dex Files
One of our current focus areas in Xamarin.Android is build performance. The “inner dev loop” directly impacts developer productivity–the time it takes to make a small code change and see the result on a device or emulator. Reevaluating parts of Xamarin.Android’s codebase has been how we’ve been able to make progress.
Retrieving data. Wait a few seconds and try to cut or copy again.
This guide will show you how to fix Typescript compile errors in Javascript project that recently added Typescript support via a . It assumes that the is configured according to the description in part 1 of this post, and that you also installed types for some of your dependencies from the namespace. This guide is more of a list of tasks that you can pick and choose from, depending on what you want to fix first. Here are the tasks:
Streamlining Azure DevOps extension development
Azure DevOps has an incredibly deep set of functionality to allow you to build extensions for your team. You can add and modify elements in the UI as well as build back-end tasks. While the majority of features your team needs on a day-to-day basis are built in, extensions allow you to modify Azure DevOps to meet your needs. In this blog post, we’re going to highlight some tips and tricks to accelerate development of your own extension.
Windows 10 SDK Preview Build 18917 available now!
Today, we released a new Windows 10 Preview Build of the SDK to be used in conjunction with Windows 10 Insider Preview (Build 18917 or greater). The Preview SDK Build 18917 contains bug fixes and under development changes to the API surface
Windows 10 SDK Preview Build 18917 available now!
Today, we released a new Windows 10 Preview Build of the SDK to be used in conjunction with Windows 10 Insider Preview (Build 18917 or greater). The Preview SDK Build 18917 contains bug fixes and under development changes to the API surface area.
Forwarded Headers Middleware Updates in .NET Core 3.0 preview 6
With the ASP.NET Core 2.1 release, we included and by default. These methods put a site into an infinite loop if deployed to an Azure Linux App Service, Azure Linux virtual machine (VM), or behind any other reverse proxy besides IIS. TLS is terminated by the reverse proxy, and Kestrel isn’t made aware of the correct request scheme.
Create interactive documentation with the new Try .NET template
In our previous post, we announced a global tool which allows developers to create interactive workshops and documentation. Tutorials created with let users start learning without having to install an editor. Features like IntelliSense and live diagnostics give users a sophisticated learning and editing experience. Today, we are releasing a new template called . This template can be installed next to existing templates. It creates a project and associated files to help content authors understand the basics of . This can serve as the foundation of your own awesome documentation!
Introducing next generation reading with Immersive Reader, a new Azure Cognitive Service
Today, we’re unveiling the preview of Immersive Reader, a new Azure Cognitive Service in the Language category. Developers can now use this service to embed inclusive capabilities into their apps for enhancing text reading and comprehension for users regardless of age or ability. No machine learning expertise is required. Based on extensive research on inclusivity and accessibility, Immersive Reader’s features are designed to read the text aloud, translate, focus user attention, and much more. Immersive Reader helps users unlock knowledge from text and achieve gains in the classroom and office.
XAML Islands v1 – Updates and Roadmap
At Microsoft Build, we announced that the Windows 10 May 2019 Update (version 1903) would include XAML Islands v1.
Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.1 is now available (and a Preview for 8.2)
Today, we are excited to announce the release of Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.1 along with the first preview of Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.2. Both releases contain exciting new features as well as improvements to performance and stability across the IDE. You can download the latest update on the Visual Studio download page or update an existing installation via the Updater within Visual Studio for Mac. You can find release notes for both the stable and preview releases on our Release Notes page. We’ve also updated our Roadmap to give you a look at what’s coming over the next 3 months in versions...
Automatic Android SDK Management
As a mobile developer building apps for Android, there are many tools used under the hood to build, deploy, and debug your Android applications. We know this can be an intimidating process. So to ensure that you will have the best experience while focusing on developing your apps, we want to make sure you’re using the latest tooling. The new and improved Automatic Android SDK Management tool is here to help!
Announcing Entity Framework Core 3.0 Preview 6 and Entity Framework 6.3 Preview 6
New previews of the next versions of EF Core and EF 6 are now available on NuGet.Org.
The Evolving Infrastructure of .NET Core
With .NET Core 3.0 Preview 6 out the door, we thought it would be useful to take a brief look at the history of our infrastructure systems and the significant improvements that have been made in the last year or so.
Visual Studio 2019 version 16.2 Preview 2
We are announcing the release of the second preview of Visual Studio 2019 version 16.2. The latest version is available for you to download from VisualStudio.com, or, if you already have the Preview installed, just click the notification bell from inside Visual Studio to update. This latest preview adds the ability debug JavaScript code using the new Microsoft Edge Insider, an improved installation experience, and updates to the application installer command-line packaging. We’ve highlighted some of the notable features below. You can see a list of all the changes in the release notes.
Announcing .NET Core 3.0 Preview 6
Today, we are announcing .NET Core 3.0 Preview 6. It includes updates for compiling assemblies for improved startup, optimizing applications for size with linker and EventPipe improvements. We’ve also released new Docker images for Alpine on ARM64.
Try the new System.Text.Json APIs
For .NET Core 3.0, we’re shipping a brand new namespace called System.Text.Json with support for a reader/writer, a document object model (DOM), and a serializer. In this blog post, I’m telling you why we built it, how it works, and how you can try it.
SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 18.1 is now generally available
We’re excited to announce the release of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 18.1. It’s been just over a month since we released SSMS 18.0. While we brought in many fantastic capabilities, we also regressed some functionality for some of our users. We are happy to share that we’ve fixed those and are also bringing in some new features along with bug fixes.
Three ways to get notified about Azure service issues
Preparing for the unexpected is part of every IT professional’s and developer’s job. Although rare, service issues like outages and planned maintenance do occur. There are many ways to stay informed, but we’ve identified three effective approaches that have helped our customers respond quickly to service issues and mitigate downtime. All three take advantage of Azure Service Health, a free Azure service that lets you configure alerts to notify you automatically about service issues that might have an impact on your availability.
Configure Visual Studio across your organization with .vsconfig
As application requirements grow more complex, so do our solutions. Keeping developers’ environments configured across our organizations grows equally complex. Developers need to install specific workloads and components in order to build a solution. Some organizations add these requirements to their README or CONTRIBUTING documents in their repositories. Some organizations might publish these requirements in documents for new hires or even just forward emails. Configuring your development environment often becomes a day-long chore. What’s really needed is a declarative authoring model that just configures Visual...
.NET Framework May 2019 Security and Quality Rollup
Today, we are releasing the May 2019 Cumulative Update, Security and Quality Rollup, and Security Only Update.
How to optimize your Azure environment
Without the right tools and approach, cloud optimization can be a time-consuming and difficult process. There is an ever growing list of best practices to follow, and it’s constantly in flux as your cloud workloads evolve. Add the challenges and emergencies you face on a day-to-day basis, and it’s easy to understand why it’s hard to be proactive about ensuring your cloud resources are running optimally.
Join Microsoft Teams at Xamarin Developer Summit
On July 11-12th, the community-run Xamarin Developer Summit is set to launch in Houston, Texas. The two-day conference is packed full of amazing Xamarin content, covering a wide range of mobile development topics by expert speakers from around the world. Microsoft is excited to partner with the Xamarin Developer Summit community and for helping to bring even more Xamarin awesomeness to this conference.
Supporting the community with WF and WCF OSS projects
At the Build conference in May 2019, we mentioned that, after we add WinForms, WPF and Entity Framework 6 to .NET Core 3.0, we do not plan to add any more of the technologies from .NET Framework to .NET Core.
Improving Azure DevOps cherry-picking
One of the more powerful git commands is the cherry-pick command. This command takes one or more existing commits and applies each commit’s changes as a new commit on a different branch. This can be an extremely powerful component of many git workflows such as the Azure DevOps team’s Release Flow. To highlight a common use-case for it, let’s talk about hot-fixing release branches.
Performance Improvements in Visual Studio 2019
Performance has been a big focus area for Visual Studio 2019, with improvements in many areas, including:
Going all in on ‘Suggest a Feature’ in Visual Studio Developer Community
In October 2018, we announced that the Developer Community site we have used for reporting issues will work for feature requests in one convenient place. We also shared the plan to migrate from UserVoice forum to Developer Community. Since then, we have received and responded to over 2500 new feature suggestions on Developer Community with hundreds of those shipped in Visual Studio. Thank you for making the move and continuing to help us improve the functionality in Visual Studio! Now that feature suggestions are fully up and running on Developer Community, we have taken the final step of the move by turning off ...
CheckBox with Xamarin.Forms 4.1.0 Pre-Release
Just a few weeks ago we shipped Xamarin.Forms 4.0, which introduced the new Shell navigation for quickly bootstrapping your applications. As well as image source unification to make it convenient to use the same images everywhere, like the new FontImageSource. Several months ago our very own James Montemagno submitted a pull request introducing a CheckBox control. In recent days we also shipped a service release to quickly respond to the feedback you sent us. You’re not slowing down, and neither are we!
What’s new in Azure SignalR 1.1.0 Preview 1
We just shipped 1.1.0 Preview 1 of Azure SignalR Service SDK to support some new features in ASP.NET Core 3.0, including endpoint routing and server-side Blazor. Let’s take a look how you can use them in your Azure SignalR application.
Azure Service Fabric 6.4 Refresh Release
The updates for .NET SDK, Java SDK and Service Fabric runtimes will be available through Web Platform Installer, NuGet packages and Maven repositories in 7-10 days within all regions.
Code Reviews Using the Visual Studio Pull Requests Extension
The Pull Requests for Visual Studio is a new experimental extension that adds several code review tools to Visual Studio. This extension aims to make it easy for you to launch and view pull requests inside the integrated development environment (IDE) without needing to switch windows or use the web. We learned from customers that having a high-quality code review process is very important to increase productivity. To achieve that, this extension is enabling you to use existing and new Visual Studio code navigation, debugging and sharing capabilities in your code review process.
Azure IoT Edge Tools Extension (Preview) Announcement
We’re excited to announce the preview availability of the new Azure IoT Edge Tools Extension (Preview) for Visual Studio 2019. The extension provides a rich set of functionalities to support development of IoT Edge solutions with Visual Studio 2019:
Introducing Push to User for Visual Studio App Center
We made some recent changes to Visual Studio App Center that enable our customers to associate app users with their data in App Center. App Center customers can use this user association to send push notifications to specific users through App Center Push. In this article, I’ll explain how it all works.
Default implementations in interfaces
With last week’s posts Announcing .NET Core 3.0 Preview 5 and Visual Studio 2019 version 16.1 Preview 3, the last major feature of C# 8.0 is now available in preview.
Create Interactive .NET Documentation with Try .NET
When it comes to developers’ documentation, it is essential that we capture their interest and lead them down the path of success as soon as possible. Across multiple languages, developer ecosystems have been providing their communities with interactive documentation where users can read the docs, run code and, edit it all in one place.
Simplify the management of application configurations with Azure App Configuration
We’re excited to announce the public preview of Azure App Configuration, a new service aimed at simplifying the management of application configuration and feature flighting for developers and IT. App Configuration provides a centralized place in Microsoft Azure for users to store all their application settings and feature flags (a.k.a., feature toggles), control their accesses and deliver the configuration data where it is needed.
Xamarin.Forms 4.0: Getting Started with Shell
Xamarin.Forms 4.0 introduced amazing new features to help streamline development when building beautiful mobile apps with C#. The main highlight was the new Xamarin.Forms Shell, which seeks to reduce the complexity of building mobile apps by providing fundamental app architecture features. Such as a full visual hierarchy, common navigation experience, URI-based routing, and integrated search handling.
Porting desktop apps to .NET Core
Since I’ve been working with the community on porting desktop applications from .NET Framework to .NET Core, I’ve noticed that there are two camps of folks: some want a very simple and short list of instructions to get their apps ported to .NET Core while others prefer a more principled approach with more background information. Instead of writing up a “Swiss Army knife”-document, we are going to publish two blog posts, one for each camp:
Announcing TypeScript 3.5
Today we’re happy to announce the availability of TypeScript 3.5! If you’re new to TypeScript, it’s a language that builds on JavaScript that adds optional static types. TypeScript code gets type-checked to avoid common mistakes like typos and accidental coercions, and then gets transformed by a program called the TypeScript compiler.
Exploring new frontiers for Git push performance
In previous posts I’ve talked about performance improvements that our team contributed to the Git community. At Microsoft, we’ve been pushing Git to its limits with the largest and busiest Git repositories on the planet, improving core Git as we go and sending these improvements back upstream. With Git 2.21.0 and later you can take advantage of a new sparse pack algorithm that we developed to dramatically improve the git push operation on large repos. For example, the Windows team saw a 7.7x performance boost once they enabled this new feature. In this post I want to explain the new sparse pack algorithm and why ...
Accelerate bot development with Bot Framework SDK and other updates
Conversational experiences have become the norm, whether you’re looking to track a package or to find out a store’s hours of operation. At Microsoft Build 2019, we highlighted a few customers who are building such conversational experiences using the Microsoft Bot Framework and Azure Bot Service to transform their customer experience.
Announcing the preview of Windows Server containers support in Azure Kubernetes Service
Kubernetes is taking the app development world by storm. Earlier this month, we shared that the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) was the fastest growing compute service in Azure’s history. Customers like Siemens Healthineers, Finastra, Maersk, and Hafslund are realizing the benefits of using AKS to easily deploy, manage and scale applications without getting into the toil of maintaining infrastructures. As the community and adoption grows, Kubernetes itself is evolving, adding more enterprise-friendly features and extending to more scenarios. The release of production-level support for Windows Server containers i...
Announcing TypeScript 3.5 RC
Today we’re happy to announce the availability of our release candidate (RC) of TypeScript 3.5. Our hope is to collect feedback and early issues to ensure our final release is simple to pick up and use right away.
Performance Improvements in .NET Core 3.0
Back when we were getting ready to ship .NET Core 2.0, I wrote a blog post exploring some of the many performance improvements that had gone into it. I enjoyed putting it together so much and received such a positive response to the post that I did it again for .NET Core 2.1, a version for which performance was also a significant focus. With //build last week and .NET Core 3.0‘s release now on the horizon, I’m thrilled to have an opportunity to do it again.
Updates to synchronous autoload of extensions in Visual Studio 2019
Since announcing that Visual Studio 2019 v16.1 will block any extension from synchronously autoloading, we’ve seen a tremendous effort of both 1st and 3rd-party extensions to implement async background load. It’s been truly amazing to see the community of extension authors stepping up to the task. Many even did it long before we announced Visual Studio 2019.
Moving from Node.js to .NET Core
Here on Visual Studio App Center, our platform is built as a set of microservices, which has afforded teams to make language and platform choices that work best for them, and ultimately allowed us to move and iterate quickly. Over time, two distinct stacks have emerged:
Welcome to the Shell Era: Xamarin.Forms 4.0 Released
For the past year, Xamarin has been on a focused journey to improve your productivity by reducing your complexity when building cross-platform mobile applications. Notice the reference to “your” complexity, and not some abstract notion of complexity. That is because the Xamarin team spends countless hours obsessing over feedback, using that information to conduct studies and have honest one-on-one conversations to learn how we can best serve you.
Visual Studio 2019 version 16.1 now generally available (and 16.2 Preview 1 as well)
Today, we are making Visual Studio 2019 version 16.1 generally available, as well as the first preview release of Visual Studio 2019 version 16.2. You can download both versions from VisualStudio.com. If you already have Preview installed, you can alternatively click the notification bell from inside Visual Studio to update. We’ve highlighted some notable features below and you can also see a list of all the changes in the current release notes or the Preview release notes.
Visual interface for Azure Machine Learning service
During Microsoft Build we announced the preview of the visual interface for Azure Machine Learning service. This new drag-and-drop workflow capability in Azure Machine Learning service simplifies the process of building, testing, and deploying machine learning models for customers who prefer a visual experience to a coding experience. This capability brings the familiarity of what we already provide in our popular Azure Machine Learning Studio with significant improvements to ease the user experience.
Introducing Visual Studio App Center Auth
For the past few months, the team has been working to develop a seamless identity management service to easily manage user identities at scale in Visual Studio App Center. Today, we’re really excited to launch App Center Auth in early preview!
Announcing Entity Framework 6.3 Preview with .NET Core Support
The first preview of the EF 6.3 runtime is now available in NuGet. Note that the package is versioned as 6.3.0-preview5. We plan to continue releasing previews of EF 6.3 every month in alignment with the .NET Core 3.0 previews, until we ship the final version.
.NET Core May 2019 Updates – 1.0.16, 1.1.14, 2.1.11 and 2.2.5
Today, we are releasing the .NET Core May 2019 Update. These updates contain security and reliability fixes. See the individual release notes for details on updated packages.
General Availability For Azure Dev Spaces
Last week at Build, we announced general availability of Azure Dev Spaces. This add-on for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) enables your team to develop applications with cloud velocity. Run your service in a live AKS cluster and test it end-to-end, without affecting your teammates. Save maintenance time and money by allowing your entire dev team to share an AKS cluster, rather than requiring separate environments for each developer.
Azure Pipelines Now Supports Additional Hosted macOS Versions
Azure Pipelines, our hosted CI/CD solution, has been offering developers the ability to build and test applications using Microsoft-hosted macOS and Xcode agents, including apps for iOS and watchOS.
Xamarin API Docs: Open Sourced and Available Now
Today, we are happy to announce the release of all Xamarin API Documentation as Open Source! API documentation drives the IntelliSense experience while being one of the best ways to help developers achieve their goals.
Modernizing Windows CE systems with Windows 10 IoT
Microsoft has provided platforms and operating systems for embedded devices for decades. As new offerings such as Windows 10 IoT have become available, our customers and partners are increasingly interested in the advanced security, platform and cloud connectivity features that these OSes provide. Customers moving from most earlier editions of Windows, like Windows XP and Windows 7, can do so with little effort because of binary-compatible applications. Other operating systems, like Windows CE, require device builders to modify source code. Porting applications like this can be challenging.
Introducing diagnostics improvements in .NET Core 3.0
In .NET Core 3.0, we are introducing a suite of tools that utilize new features in the .NET runtime that make it easier to diagnose and solve performance problems.
AddressSanitizer (ASan) for the Linux Workload in Visual Studio 2019 (C++)
In Visual Studio 2019 version 16.1 Preview 3 we have integrated AddressSanitizer (ASan) into Visual Studio for Linux projects. ASan is a runtime memory error detector for C/C++ that catches the following errors:
Signing into Azure DevOps using your GitHub credentials
Across all of Microsoft, we are focusing on empowering developers to build better apps, faster. One way we are accomplishing that is by providing a range of products and services covering all stages of the software development lifecycle. This includes IDEs and DevOps tools, application and data platforms on the cloud, operating systems, Artificial Intelligence and IoT solutions, and more. All of these are centered around developers, both as individuals working in teams and organizations, and as members of developer communities.
The Next Evolution of Xamarin Training: Microsoft Learn
We’re excited to announce two new learning paths on Building Xamarin Apps in Microsoft Learn: A free and interactive learning portal.
What’s new with Azure Pipelines
Azure Pipelines, part of the Azure DevOps suite, is our Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI and CD) platform, used every day by large enterprises, individual developers, and open source projects. Today, we’re thrilled to announce new features for Azure Pipelines, including some much-requested ones:
.NET Core is the Future of .NET
We introduced .NET Core 1.0 on November 2014. The goal with .NET Core was to take the learning from our experience building, shipping and servicing .NET Framework over the previous 12 years and build a better product. Some examples of these improvements are side-by-side installations (you can install a new version and not worry about breaking existing apps), self-contained applications (applications can embed .NET, so .NET does not need to be on the computer), not being a component of the Windows operating system (.NET ships new releases independent of the OS schedule) and many more. On top of this, we made .NET ...
Announcing ML.NET 1.0
We are excited to announce the release of ML.NET 1.0 today. ML.NET is a free, cross-platform and open source machine learning framework designed to bring the power of machine learning (ML) into .NET applications.
ASP.NET Core updates in .NET Core 3.0 Preview 5
.NET Core 3.0 Preview 5 is now available. This iteration was brief for the team and primarily includes bug fixes and improvements to the more significant updates in Preview 4. This post summarizes the important points in this release.
Announcing .NET Core 3.0 Preview 5
Today, we are announcing .NET Core 3.0 Preview 5. It includes a new Json serializer, support for publishing single file executables, an update to runtime roll-forward, and changes in the BCL. If you missed it, check out the improvements we released in .NET Core 3.0 Preview 4, from last month.
Introducing .NET 5
Today, we’re announcing that the next release after .NET Core 3.0 will be .NET 5. This will be the next big release in the .NET family.
C++ with Visual Studio 2019 and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)
In Visual Studio 2019 version 16.1 Preview 3 we have added native support for using C++ with the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). WSL lets you run a lightweight Linux environment directly on Windows, including most command-line tools, utilities, and applications. In Visual Studio you no longer need to add a remote connection or configure SSH in order to build and debug on your local WSL installation. This will save you time getting up and running in a Linux environment and eliminates the need to copy and maintain sources on a remote machine.
Improvements to Visual Studio App Center Distribution
Here at Visual Studio App Center, we try to incorporate customer obsession in our day to day. Earlier this year we started an effort for widespread customer outreach to understand our users and guide product prioritization. The effort helped us gain a lot of insight and helped our prioritization last quarter. However, as we continue to grow, we unfortunately don’t have the capacity to reach out to as many customers as we would like.
Azure DevOps Labs now includes Azure DevOps Server 2019 VM and labs
Today, I am excited to announce the availability of Azure DevOps Server 2019 Virtual Machine and the corresponding self-paced labs on Azure DevOps Labs.
Announcing the general availability of IntelliCode plus a sneak peek
We’re excited to announce the general availability of Visual Studio IntelliCode and offer a sneak peek at an up-and-coming feature we think you’ll love! With the release of Visual Studio 2019 Version 16.1, IntelliCode will be included with any workload supporting C#, C++, TypeScript/JavaScript, and XAML. However, only the C# and XAML models are currently generally available. C++ and TypeScript/JavaScript remain in preview at this time. We’ve learned so much from all of you in during our year in public preview and are thrilled for this next step.
Visual Studio Container Tools Extension (Preview) Announcement
Today we’re excited to announce the preview availability of the new Visual Studio Container Tools Extension (Preview) for Visual Studio 2019. This is an important milestone in the iteration of our container tooling in Visual Studio, as we try to empower developers to work better with their containerized applications directly from within the IDE. The current Visual Studio Tools for Containers provide a great getting started experience for developers building new containerized applications, as well as capabilities to containerize an existing application. The extension tooling, available today, will provide develope...
Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.1 Preview 1
Today, we are proud to announce the next major update for Visual Studio for Mac: Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.1 Preview. In this update, we are offering our new C# editor as the default experience in addition to introducing support for .NET Core 3 Preview and new project templates. We’ve also been working to improve performance and reliability across the board, based on feedback that we’ve heard from the Visual Studio for Mac community.
Visual Studio 2019 version 16.1 Preview 3
The third Preview version of Visual Studio 2019 version 16.1 is now available. You can download it from VisualStudio.com. Or, if you’re already on the Preview channel, just click the notification bell from inside your Visual Studio 2019 Preview installation to update. This latest preview contains a range of additions, including IntelliCode support by default, various C++ productivity enhancements, and .NET tooling updates. We’ve highlighted some notable features below, and you can see a list of all the changes in the Preview release notes.
Intelligent Productivity and Collaboration, from Anywhere
Developers today are encountering an overwhelming amount of complexity due to the growing emphasis on time-to-market, and a broader variety of technologies being used than ever before (e.g. polyglot apps, microservices). Additionally, teams are becoming more geographically distributed, which increases the need for efficient collaboration in order to maintain knowledge transfer within agile environments.
Azure DevOps Roadmap update for 2019 Q2
Last week we published an update to the Features Timeline. The features listed below link to the public roadmap project where you can find more details about each item. Here are a few highlights on some of the features for Q2.
Introducing .NET for Apache® Spark™ Preview
Today at Spark + AI summit we are excited to announce .NET for Apache Spark. Spark is a popular open source distributed processing engine for analytics over large data sets. Spark can be used for processing batches of data, real-time streams, machine learning, and ad-hoc query.
Azure SignalR Service now supports ASP.NET!
We’ve just shipped the official version of the SignalR Service SDK with ASP.NET support:
5 tips to get more out of Azure Stream Analytics Visual Studio Tools
Azure Stream Analytics is an on-demand real-time analytics service to power intelligent action. Azure Stream Analytics tools for Visual Studio make it easier for you to develop, manage, and test Stream Analytics jobs. This year we provided two major updates in January and March, unleashing new useful features. In this blog we’ll introduce some of these capabilities and features to help you improve productivity.
Visual Studio C++ Template IntelliSense Populates Based on Instantiations in Your Code
Ever since we announced Template IntelliSense, you all have given us great suggestions. One very popular suggestion was to have the Template Bar auto-populate candidates based on instantiations in your code. In Visual Studio 2019 version 16.1 Preview 2, we’ve added this functionality via an “Add All Existing Instantiations” option in the Template Bar dropdown menu. The following examples are from the SuperTux codebase.
Improved C++ IntelliCode now Ships with Visual Studio 2019
IntelliCode support for C++ previously shipped as an extension, but it is now an in-box component that installs with the “Desktop Development with C++” workload in Visual Studio 2019 16.1 Preview 2. Make sure that IntelliCode is active for C++ by enabling the “C++ base model” under Tools > Options > IntelliCode > General:
C++17/20 Features and Fixes in Visual Studio 2019
The second preview of Visual Studio 2019 version 16.1 is now available. You can download it from VisualStudio.com, or, if you already have installed Preview, just click the notification bell inside Visual Studio to update. This latest preview contains additional performance and reliability fixes as well as enhancements for debugging, NuGet, extensibility, and C++ development. We’ve highlighted some notable features below. You can see a list of all the changes in the Preview release notes.
Redesigning the New Project Dialog
Last week, we released Visual Studio 2019 version 16.1 Preview 2. If you have the latest update – awesome and thank you. If not, you can download it from the link above. Or, if you already have the Preview, just click the notification bell inside Visual Studio to update. This post discusses one of the most visible interface changes we’ve made in Visual Studio 2019 – the New Project Dialog.
Shrinking Your Android App Size
Mobile devices are limited in many ways. Whether it’s how much of a charge your battery can hold, the amount of storage you have left, or the speed of your internet connection to view more cat gifs. We need to keep this into consideration for our users to give them the absolute best mobile experience.
Upcoming Updates for .NET Framework 4.8
The .NET Framework 4.8 product release is now available. The .NET Framework 4.8 product will receive updates on the same cadence and the usual channels (Windows Update, WSUS, Catalog) as all .NET Framework and Windows cumulative updates. For Windows 10, .NET Framework 4.8 updates will now be delivered as independent updates, alongside the Windows cumulative updates. In this post, I explain how updates to .NET Framework 4.8 are delivered so you are ready for them.
Visual Studio 2019 version 16.1 Preview 2
The second preview of Visual Studio 2019 version 16.1 is now available. You can download it from VisualStudio.com, or, if you already have installed Preview, just click the notification bell inside Visual Studio to update. This latest preview contains additional performance and reliability fixes as well as enhancements for debugging, NuGet, extensibility, and C++ development. We’ve highlighted some notable features below. You can see a list of all the changes in the Preview release notes.
Blazor now in official preview!
With this newest Blazor release we’re pleased to announce that Blazor is now in official preview! Blazor is no longer experimental and we are committing to ship it as a supported web UI framework including support for running client-side in the browser on WebAssembly.
Announcing Entity Framework Core 3.0 Preview 4
Today, we are making the fourth preview of Entity Framework Core 3.0 available on NuGet, alongside .NET Core 3.0 Preview 4 and ASP.NET Core 3.0 Preview 4. We encourage you to install this preview to test the new functionality and assess the impact of the included breaking changes.
Announcing .NET Core 3 Preview 4
Today, we are announcing .NET Core 3.0 Preview 4. It includes a chart control for Windows Forms, HTTP/2 support, GC updates to use less memory, support for CPU limits with Docker, the addition of PowerShell in .NET Core SDK Docker container images, and other improvements. If you missed it, check out the improvements we released in .NET Core 3.0 Preview 3 just last month.
Announcing the .NET Framework 4.8
We are thrilled to announce the release of the .NET Framework 4.8 today. It’s included in the Windows 10 May 2019 Update. .NET Framework 4.8 is also available on Windows 7+ and Windows Server 2008 R2+.
Move your data from AWS S3 to Azure Storage using AzCopy
AzCopy v10 (Preview) now supports Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 as a data source. You can now copy an entire AWS S3 bucket, or even multiple buckets, to Azure Blob Storage using AzCopy.
Azure.Source – Volume 78
When it comes to adding a performance tier between compute and file storage, Avere Systems has led the way with its high-performance caching appliance known as the Avere FXT Edge Filer. Last week at NAB, attendees will got a first look at the new Azure FXT Edge Filer, now with even more performance, memory, SSD, and support for Azure Blob. Since Microsoft’s acquisition of Avere last March, we’ve been working to provide an exciting combination of performance and efficiency to support hybrid storage architectures with the Avere appliance technology. We are currently previewing the FXT 6600 model at customer sites, ...
.NET Core Workers in Azure Container Instances
In .NET Core 3.0 we are introducing a new type of application template called Worker Service. This template is intended to give you a starting point for writing long running services in .NET Core. In this walkthrough you’ll learn how to use a Worker with Azure Container Registry and Azure Container Instances to get your Worker running as a microservice in the cloud.
Getting Ready for macOS’s Hardened Runtime and Notary
With macOS Mojave, Apple introduced support for Hardened Runtime and Notary service. These two services are designed to improve application security on macOS. Recently Apple has stated:
.NET application migration using Azure App Services and Azure Container Services
Designed for developers and solution architects who need to understand how to move business critical apps to the cloud, this online workshop series gets you hands-on with a proven process for migrating an existing ASP.NET based application to a container based application. Join us live for 90 minutes on Wednesday and Fridays through May 3 to get expert guidance and to get your questions answered.
New features for extension authors in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.1
Earlier this week, we released Visual Studio 2019 version 16.1 Preview 1 (see release notes). It’s the first preview of the first update to Visual Studio 2019. If you’re not already set up to get preview releases, then please do that now. The preview channel installs side-by-side with the release channel and they don’t interfere with each other. I highly recommend all extension authors install the preview.
Sharing Files & Email Attachments with Xamarin.Essentials Preview Features
In the recent release of Xamarin.Essentials (1.1.0), we introduced several new stable features including detect shake, browser customization, and a plethora of platform helpers. The team has also been working hard on one of the top requested features around files. So to get feedback from developers, we snuck a few preview features into 1.1.0. Including the ability to share a file or add a file as an email attachment! It is extremely easy to get started using these new preview features with just a few lines of code.
.NET Core April 2019 Updates – 2.1.10 and 2.2.4
Today, we are releasing the .NET Core April 2019 Update. These updates contain security and reliability fixes. See the individual release notes for details on included fixes.
How to accelerate DevOps with Machine Learning lifecycle management
DevOps is the union of people, processes, and products to enable the continuous delivery of value to end users. DevOps for machine learning is about bringing the lifecycle management of DevOps to Machine Learning. Utilizing Machine Learning, DevOps can easily manage, monitor, and version models while simplifying workflows and the collaboration process.
Become a Dev Rockstar by Learning About your Users with Visual Studio App Center and Azure
As a customer of Visual Studio App Center, you linked your code repository, configured your first mobile build definitions, committed your code, watched your builds in real-time, and installed your mobile app on real devices. Bravo! You have set up a full Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment mobile pipeline where code is committed and new features are available to your testers or customers within minutes.
Getting Started With WorkManager (Xamarin)
If you need to schedule a background task on Android, you’re probably familiar with all of the various ways to accomplish this such as:
Introducing the App Service Migration Assistant for ASP.NET applications
In June 2018, we released the App Service Migration Assessment Tool. The Assessment Tool was designed to help customers quickly and easily assess whether a site could be moved to Azure App Service by scanning an externally accessible (HTTP) endpoint. Today we’re pleased to announce the release of an updated version, the App Service Migration Assistant! The new version helps customers and partners move sites identified by the assessment tool by quickly and easily migrating ASP.Net sites to App Service.
Announcing ML.NET 1.0 RC – Machine Learning for .NET
ML.NET is an open-source and cross-platform machine learning framework (Windows, Linux, macOS) for .NET developers. Using ML.NET, developers can leverage their existing tools and skillsets to develop and infuse custom AI into their applications by creating custom machine learning models for common scenarios like Sentiment Analysis, Recommendation, Image Classification and more!.
Web and Azure Tool Updates in Visual Studio 2019
Hopefully by now you’ve seen that Visual Studio 2019 is now generally available. As you would expect, we’ve added improvements for web and Azure development. As a starting point, Visual Studio 2019 comes with a new experience for getting started with your code and we updated the experience for creating ASP.NET and ASP.NET Core projects to match:
Little great things about Visual Studio 2019
A few days ago, we announced the general availability of Visual Studio 2019. But I’ve been using Visual Studio 2019 exclusively since the first internal build – long before the release of Preview 1 in December of 2018. During this time, there has been a lot of little features that have put a smile on my face and made me more productive.
.NET Core Workers as Windows Services
In .NET Core 3.0 we are introducing a new type of application template called Worker Service. This template is intended to give you a starting point for writing long running services in .NET Core. In this walkthrough we will create a worker and run it as a Windows Service.
GlideX For Fast Images on Android
Getting good image performance on Android has traditionally been a difficult task. Google has some documentation on the subject, which unfortunately mentions some complex topics:
Migrating Delegate.BeginInvoke Calls for .NET Core
I recently worked with a couple customers migrating applications to .NET Core that had to make code changes to workaround and methods on delegates not being supported on .NET Core. In this post, we’ll look at why these APIs aren’t implemented for .NET Core, why their usage isn’t caught by the .NET API Portability Analyzer, and how to fix code using them to work with .NET Core.
Re-reading ASP.Net Core request bodies with EnableBuffering()
In some scenarios there’s a need to read the request body multiple times. Some examples include
Visual Studio 2019 now available for download
Visual Studio 2019 is generally available today and available for download. With Visual Studio 2019, you and your teams will become more productive in building current and future projects as you benefit from the innovation in the IDE that makes every keystroke count.
Visual Studio 2019 for Mac now available for download
Today, we are excited to announce the general availability of Visual Studio 2019 for Mac – the next major version of our .NET IDE on the Mac. This release is now available as an update in the Stable channel for existing Visual Studio for Mac users, and new users can download and install it today as well. You also can learn more about the new capabilities in this version by reading our release notes.
Introducing Time Travel Debugging for Visual Studio Enterprise 2019
The Time Travel Debugging (TTD) preview in Visual Studio Enterprise 2019 provides the ability to record a Web app running on a Azure Virtual Machine (VM) and then accurately reconstruct and replay the execution path. TTD integrates with our Snapshot Debugger offering and allows you to rewind and replay each line of code however many times you want, helping you isolate and identify problems that might only occur in production environments.
Visual Studio 2019 .NET productivity
Your friendly neighborhood .NET productivity team (aka. Roslyn) focuses a lot on improving the .NET coding experience. Sometimes it’s the little refactorings and code fixes that really improve your workflow. You may have seen many improvements in the previews, but for all of you who were eagerly awaiting the GA release here’s a few features you may enjoy!
Introducing the Xamarin.iOS Interpreter
Historically iOS applications have had a number of limitations when running on a device, as Apple disallows the execution of dynamically generated code. Applications are compiled “Ahead of Time” (AOT) before deployment because of this. You can read more about this architecture here.
Visual Studio 2019 now available for download
Visual Studio 2019 is generally available today and available for download. With Visual Studio 2019, you and your teams will become more productive in building current and future projects as you benefit from the innovation in the IDE that makes every keystroke count.
Visual Studio 2019 for Mac now available for download
Today, we are excited to announce the general availability of Visual Studio 2019 for Mac – the next major version of our .NET IDE on the Mac. This release is now available as an update in the Stable channel for existing Visual Studio for Mac users, and new users can download and install it today as well. You also can learn more about the new capabilities in this version by reading our release notes.
Live Share now included with Visual Studio 2019
We’re excited to announce the general availability of Visual Studio Live Share, and that it is now included with Visual Studio 2019! In the year since Live Share began its public preview, we’ve been working to enhance the many ways you collaborate with your team. This release is the culmination of that work, and all the things we’ve learned from you along the way.
What’s New for Xamarin Developers in Visual Studio 2019
Visual Studio 2019 is the next major version of Visual Studio which is now generally available (GA)! With this version, there is a lot to love. From real-time collaboration with colleagues using Visual Studio Live Share to the new Visual Studio start window as well as delights like per-monitor DPI support and improved debug capabilities. We believe this is the best release of Visual Studio yet!
DirectML at GDC 2019
Last year at GDC, we shared our excitement about the many possibilities for using machine learning in game development. If you’re unfamiliar with machine learning or neural networks, I strongly encourage you to check out our blog post from last year, which is a primer for many of the topics discussed in this post.
Get Your Apps Ready for Apple’s New Watch Processor Architecture
Last fall, Apple announced that new applications and updates would need to support the Apple Watch Series 4.
Linker Throughput Improvement in Visual Studio 2019
In Visual Studio 2019 Preview 2 we made the compiler back-end to prune away debug information that is unrelated to code or data emitted into binary and changed certain hash implementations in the PDB engine, to improve linker throughput, which resulted in more than 2x reduction on link time for some large AAA game title.
Using Newtonsoft.Json in a Visual Studio extension
The ever popular Newtonsoft.Json NuGet package by James Newton-King is used throughout Visual Studio’s code base. Visual Studio 2015 (14.0) was the first version to ship with it. Later updates to Visual Studio also updated its Newtonsoft.Json version when an internal feature needed it. Today it is an integral part of Visual Studio and you can consider it a part of the SDK alongside other Visual Studio assemblies.
.NET Framework March 2019 Update
Today, we released the March 2019 Update. Quality and Reliability This release contains the following quality and reliability improvements.
Visual Studio Subscriptions – everything you need for Azure development
Recently, our product team has been talking with Visual Studio subscribers to learn more about how they approach cloud development. Many of the subscribers we spoke with mentioned that they were unaware of the benefits included with a Visual Studio subscription, that are intended to make learning new technologies and prototyping easy.
C++ Game performance and compilation time improvements in Visual Studio 2019
The C++ compiler in Visual Studio 2019 includes several new optimizations and improvements geared towards increasing the performance of games and making game developers more productive by reducing the compilation time of large projects. Although the focus of this blog post is on the game industry, these improvements apply to most C++ applications and C++ developers.
Xamarin.Essentials Adds Detect Shake, Browser Customization, Color Helpers, and More!
Xamarin.Essentials are your ultimate open source library to access native features from a single cross-platform API. Since the first release, we have received awesome feedback on GitHub from developers that integrated it into their apps. We have also received some great pull requests to add some new features and bug fixes that have gone into the newest release 1.1.0 that are available today. This includes the ability to detect shake movement of the device, customization when opening the browser, ability to check for mock location, and several platform helpers.
Announcing TypeScript 3.4 RC
Today we’re happy to announce the availability of our release candidate (RC) of TypeScript 3.4. Our hope is to collect feedback and early issues to ensure our final release is simple to pick up and use right away.
.NET Core Container Images now Published to Microsoft Container Registry
We are now publishing .NET Core container images to Microsoft Container Registry (MCR). We have also made other changes to the images we publish, described in this post.
Visual Studio 2019 Launch Event agenda and speakers now published
We’re only 15 days away from the general availability of Visual Studio 2019 and our virtual Visual Studio 2019 Launch Event. It’s been incredible to see all the buzz and excitement in the community around the launch, from the 180+ local launch events happening all across the globe over the next months to all the posts about the features you’re most excited about on Twitter. Today, I’m happy to share the full agenda for the Visual Studio 2019 Launch Event with you, alongside the list of speakers.
Code more, scroll less with Visual Studio IntelliCode
You may know that Visual Studio IntelliCode helps you write code from commonly used libraries, based on machine learning across thousands of open sourced GitHub repos. Instead of having to search and scroll through a sorted list of methods and properties, you get suggestions on the most likely ones for your coding context as you type.
Achieve more with Microsoft Game Stack
Microsoft is built on the belief of empowering people and organizations to achieve more – it is the DNA of our company. Today we are announcing a new initiative, Microsoft Game Stack, in which we commit to bringing together Microsoft tools and services that will empower game developers like yourself, whether you’re an indie developer just starting out or a AAA studio, to achieve more.
Announcing Visual Studio App Center Integration with PlayFab: Better Tools For Better Player Engagement
In January of 2018 Microsoft announced the acquisition of PlayFab, a complete backend of services for building and growing cloud connected games. Seeing that Visual Studio App Center and PlayFab shared common goals, and complimentary services, we started looking for ways we could offer a shared experience to bring greater value and new capabilities to our customers. Today we are excited to announce a preview release of our first steps into that shared offering, bringing App Center diagnostics data into PlayFab. Now, you have even more rich data at your disposal as you manage and monitor your game.
Enhanced Xamarin Development With MFractor
MFractor is a powerful Visual Studio for Mac extension to streamline the development of your Xamarin applications. By improving many common Xamarin workflows, MFractor can save a significant amount of development time and effort over the course of your project.
Argument completion made easy with Visual Studio IntelliCode
Visual Studio IntelliCode saves you time by putting what you’re most likely to use at the top of your completion list. IntelliCode recommendations are based on thousands of open source projects on GitHub, each with over 100 stars. When combined with the context of your code, the completion list is tailored to promote common practices. As a result, instead of having to search and scroll through sorted lists, you get suggestions on the most likely ones for your coding context as you type.
A Quick Update on Google Components for iOS and Android
One of the best parts about using Xamarin for mobile development is access to all of the platform APIs from C# bindings. Additionally, any native iOS or Android library can be consumed by a Xamarin application by creating a custom binding project. That’s exactly what the Component Team here at Microsoft does for the most popular libraries that developers need access to. In the last 6 months, there have been drastic changes across several key libraries such as Google Play Services and Android Support Libraries. To catch everyone up on work that the team has been doing, what is available for you today, and what’s c...
Announcing ML.NET 0.11 – Machine Learning for .NET
ML.NET is an open-source and cross-platform machine learning framework (Windows, Linux, macOS) for .NET developers. Using ML.NET, developers can leverage their existing tools and skillsets to develop and infuse custom AI into their applications by creating custom machine learning models for common scenarios like Sentiment Analysis, Recommendation, Image Classification and more!.
Visual Studio extensions and version ranges demystified
Extension authors use visual Studio version ranges to specify what versions of Visual Studio their extensions support. A version range looks like this [14.0, 17.0) and specifies the minimum and maximum version of Visual Studio as well as if the edges are included or excluded. The syntax with mismatching braces may initially seem a bit odd and what exactly do those numbers refer to? Let’s unravel the mystery of the Visual Studio version ranges.
Beautiful Material Design for Android & iOS
This week, Xamarin.Forms 3.6 shipped with another round of improvements, the most exciting of which is called Visual. Visual enables developers to create beautiful, cross-platform mobile applications that share not only a massive amount of code but also design and behavior. Material Design is the first style of cross-platform controls to take advantage of Visual.
Blazor 0.9.0 experimental release now available
Blazor 0.9.0 is now available! This release updates Blazor with the Razor Components improvements in .NET Core 3.0 Preview 3.
Making C++ Exception Handling Smaller On x64
Visual Studio 2019 Preview 3 introduces a new feature to reduce the binary size of C++ exception handling (try/catch and automatic destructors) on x64. Dubbed FH4 (for __CxxFrameHandler4, see below), I developed new formatting and processing for data used for C++ exception handling that is ~60% smaller than the existing implementation resulting in overall binary reduction of up to 20% for programs with heavy usage of C++ exception handling.
Windows Desktop Developer Twitch Workshop (March 14, 2019)
Today we’d like to announce an upcoming free live streaming workshop on March 14th, 2019 focused on Windows Desktop development for .NET applications using frameworks such as WPF, WinForms and UWP.
Xamarin.Forms 3.6: Visual Has Materialized
We’re pleased to announce the release of Xamarin.Forms 3.6 in the usual cadence of our regular releases. In addition to the usual enhancements and bug fixes, we’re also moving our Visual feature from experimental to stable status. With Visual, you can now implement a Material look-and-feel on supported controls in your Android and iOS apps.
ASP.NET Core updates in .NET Core 3.0 Preview 3
.NET Core 3.0 Preview 3 is now available and it includes a bunch of new updates to ASP.NET Core.
Azure DevOps Server 2019 Now Available
Following the launch of Azure DevOps in September, we’re pleased to announce the official release of Azure DevOps Server 2019! Previously known as Team Foundation Server (TFS), Azure DevOps Server 2019 brings the power of Azure DevOps into your dedicated environment. You can install Azure DevOps Server 2019 into any datacenter or sovereign, and determine when to apply updates.
Announcing .NET Core 3 Preview 3
Today, we are announcing .NET Core 3.0 Preview 3. We would like to update you on the .NET Core 3.0 schedule and introduce you to improvements in .NET Core SDK installers, Docker containers, Range, and Index. We also have updates on the Windows Desktop and Entity Framework projects.
Announcing the Open Sourcing of Windows Calculator
Today, we’re excited to announce that we are open sourcing Windows Calculator on GitHub under the MIT License. This includes the source code, build system, unit tests, and product roadmap. Our goal is to build an even better user experience in partnership with the community. We are encouraging your fresh perspectives and increased participation to help define the future of Calculator.
Floating-Point Parsing and Formatting improvements in .NET Core 3.0
Starting back with the .NET Core 2.1 release, we were making iterative improvements to the floating-point parsing and formatting code in .NET Core. Now, in .NET Core 3.0 Preview 3, we are nearing completion of this work and would like to share more details about these changes and some of the differences you might see in your applications.
Visual Studio 2019 for Mac Preview 3 now available
Today, we’re excited to announce the Preview 3 release of Visual Studio 2019 for Mac. This is the next release of our IDE for .NET Developers on the Mac. You can download it now or use the in-product update feature if you already have a previous preview release installed.
Open Existing CMake Caches in Visual Studio
Visual Studio typically manages all the details of CMake for you, under the hood, when you open a project. However, some development workflows require more fine-grained control over how CMake is invoked. The latest Visual Studio 2019 Preview lets you have complete control over CMake if your project needs more flexibility. You can now give your custom or preferred tools complete control of your project’s CMake cache and build tree instead of letting Visual Studio manage it for you.
Best Practices and Tips for Using Xamarin.UITest
We can all agree that it is very important for mobile apps to have great user interfaces, be accessible, and be extremely performant. Given the plethora of devices with different screen sizes, screen densities, and RAM, it is of utmost importance that we not only unit test app functionality but also have a set of robust user interface tests to ensure high quality and performant apps. We, on the Mobile Customer Advisory Team, are often asked to help customers get started with UITests or help make their tests scalable and maintainable. I’d like to share some best practices and tips & tricks our team uses to hel...
CUDA 10.1 available now, with support for latest Microsoft Visual Studio 2019 versions (C++)
We are pleased to echo NVIDIA’s announcement for CUDA 10.1 today, and are particularly excited about CUDA 10.1’s continued compatibility for Visual Studio. CUDA 10.1 will work with RC, RTW and future updates of Visual Studio 2019. To stay committed to our promise for a Pain-free upgrade to any version of Visual Studio 2017 that also carries forward to Visual Studio 2019, we partnered closely with NVIDIA for the past few months to make sure CUDA users can easily migrate between Visual Studio versions. Congratulations to NVIDIA for this milestone and thank you for a great collaboration!
Cognitive Services Speech SDK 1.3 – February update
Developers can now access the latest Cognitive Services Speech SDK which now supports:
View PDF Files within Your Xamarin.Forms Apps Using the Syncfusion PDF Viewer
Probably the most popular document format used for sharing content across various applications and operating systems is a PDF (Portable Document Format). As a Xamarin developer, you may need to display PDF documents like invoices and reports within your Xamarin applications.
Visual Studio 2019 Release Candidate (RC) now available
Today we’re sharing a Visual Studio 2019 Release Candidate (RC) – one of the final steps before general availability on April 2 at the virtual launch event. You can download the RC at visualstudio.com/downloads. As always, check out the release notes for the RC for all the details.
Growing the Visual Studio App Center Service Portfolio
As you know, Visual Studio App Center delivers a solid DevOps foundation for your app projects, delivering the cloud services you use build, test and deploy your apps. Many customers use App Center services inside their apps as well, collecting volumes of information from apps running in the wild through our Analytics service and capturing data on the rare application crash through Diagnostics. App developers and marketers engage with their customers in a variety of ways through the App Center Push service.
An update to C# versions and C# tooling
Starting with Visual Studio 2019 Preview 4, we’ll be adjusting how C# versions are treated in .NET tooling.
Going Public (With Our Visual Studio App Center Plans)
Throughout Visual Studio App Center’s life, we published a product roadmap and changelog, but we never really felt comfortable talking too far into the future. With so many services and so many things we wanted to do for each, we weren’t confident in what we’d get to and when we’d do it. This is OK, but not great, and our customers consistently told us they wanted more, earlier – it’s time we delivered.
How to port desktop applications to .NET Core 3.0
In this post, I will describe how to port a desktop application from .NET Framework to .NET Core. I picked a WinForms application as an example. Steps for WPF application are similar and I’ll describe what needs to be done different for WPF as we go. I will also show how you can keep using the WinForms designer in Visual Studio even though it is under development and is not yet available for .NET Core projects.
Quick Tip: Debugging Local ASP.NET Core Web APIs on Android Emulators
When developing mobile applications with a web API backend there is always a need to debug locally on your development machine. If you are using Visual Studio for Mac and debugging iOS applications you know it is as easy as running your web API locally and using localhost as the URL for web requests. However, this is not the case for Android debugging, because Android emulators have their own networking configuration whereas the iOS simulator uses the same network as the local machine. But we’ve got you, Android app developers, covered. With a little “know how” you can now also debug your Android apps locally reg...
Use your favorite extensions with Visual Studio 2019
Do you want to try the preview of Visual Studio 2019 but worry that your favorite extensions aren’t supported yet? A record number of extensions have already added support for Visual Studio 2019. So there is a good chance your favorite extensions are among them. In fact, more than 850 extensions are currently available, and more are being updated every day.
Announcing .NET Framework 4.8 Early Access Build 3745
As we get closer to the final version, our efforts are focused on stabilizing the release over the coming weeks. Please keep up the support by trying out our latest preview 3745 and provide any feedback you may have for the build or for .NET 4.8 overall, via the .NET Framework Early Access GitHub repository.
Reflecting your feedback in Visual Studio 2019
We started sharing Visual Studio 2019 Previews with the goal to deliver the best possible experience through a more open dialog.
Announcing TypeScript 3.2
TypeScript 3.2 is here today! If you’re unfamiliar with TypeScript, it’s a language that brings static type-checking to JavaScript so that you can catch issues before you even run your code – or before you even save your file. It also includes the latest JavaScript features from the ECMAScript standard on older browsers and runtimes by compiling those features into a form that they understand.
.NET Framework February 2019 Preview of Quality Rollup
Today, we released the February 2019 Preview of Quality Rollup. Quality and Reliability This release contains the following quality and reliability improvements.
Update to Azure DevOps Projects support for Azure Kubernetes Service
Kubernetes is going from strength to strength as adoption across the industry continues to grow. But there are still plenty of customers coming to container orchestration for the first time while also building up their familiarity with Docker and containers in general. We see the need to help teams go from a container image, or just a git repo, and help get them to an app running in Kubernetes in as few steps as possible. It’s also important that we do this in a way that will allow them to customize afterward and build on their knowledge as they go.
C++ Binary Compatibility and Pain-Free Upgrades to Visual Studio 2019
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.
Persisting Settings and Preferences in Mobile Apps with Xamarin.Essentials
An essential part of any mobile application is the ability to persist data. Sometimes that is a large amount of data that requires a database, but often it is smaller pieces of data such as settings and preferences that need to be persisted between application launches. This is where Xamarin.Essentials can help out with its wide range of cross-platform APIs for mobile apps. Specifically, the Preferences API enables you to store application preferences in a key/value store. Let’s take look.
.NET Core 1.0 and 1.1 will reach End of Life on June 27, 2019
.NET Core 1.0 was released on June 27, 2016 and .NET Core 1.1 was released on November 16, 2016. As an LTS release, .NET Core 1.0 is supported for three years. .NET Core 1.1 fits into the same support timeframe as .NET Core 1.0. .NET Core 1.0 and 1.1 will reach end of life and go out of support on June 27, 2019, three years after the initial .NET Core 1.0 release.
Join us April 2nd for the Launch of Visual Studio 2019!
At Connect(); a little over two months ago, we released the first Visual Studio 2019 Preview. Based on your inputs, we’ve made several improvements to Visual Studio 2019 in our endeavor to make this the best Visual Studio yet. On behalf of our entire team, I’m excited to announce the upcoming release of Visual Studio 2019 on April 2, 2019 at the Visual Studio 2019 Launch Event.
Visual Studio 2019 Preview 2 Blog Rollup (C++)
Visual Studio 2019 Preview 2 was a huge release for us, so we’ve written a host of articles to explore the changes in more detail. For the short version, see the Visual Studio 2019 Preview 2 Release Notes.
Using Azure DevOps from the Command Line
We talk with customers who love the command line. Donovan Brown maintains the community VSTeam command for folks that love PowerShell, but we’re pleased to announce that we now have a public preview of Azure DevOps extension for the Azure CLI which is available cross platform.
Announcing Windows Community Toolkit v5.1
It’s with great pleasure today that we announce the next update to the Windows Community Toolkit, version 5.1, made possible with help and contributions from our developer community. This update brings high-quality animation support with the inclusion of Lottie-Windows in the toolkit. In addition, it provides a control for choosing Remote Devices, a new Image Cropping control, and many control accessibility fixes.
Azure DevOps Roadmap update for 2019 Q1
Last week we updated the Features Timeline to provide visibility on our key investments for this quarter. The features listed below link to the public roadmap project where you can find more details about each item. Here are a few highlights on some of the features for Q1 and Q2.
Join us April 2nd for the Launch of Visual Studio 2019!
At Connect(); a little over two months ago, we released the first Visual Studio 2019 Preview. Based on your inputs, we’ve made several improvements to Visual Studio 2019 in our endeavor to make this the best Visual Studio yet. On behalf of our entire team, I’m excited to announce the upcoming release of Visual Studio 2019 on April 2, 2019 at the Visual Studio 2019 Launch Event.
Growing the Visual Studio App Center Service Portfolio
As you know, Visual Studio App Center delivers a solid DevOps foundation for your app projects, delivering the cloud services you use build, test and deploy your apps. Many customers use App Center services inside their apps as well, collecting volumes of information from apps running in the wild through our Analytics service and capturing data on the rare application crash through Diagnostics. App developers and marketers engage with their customers in a variety of ways through the App Center Push service.
Easily Check Mobile Device Connectivity with Xamarin.Essentials
One of the best parts of a mobile device is their instant access to the internet. As a mobile app developer, it’s great to be able to pull data from the server to our apps to provide users with a delightful experience. Of course, until your user puts their device on airplane mode or hits a rough patch with no cell reception. To provide the best user experience we need access to the current network state of our users’ device.
.NET Core February 2019 Updates – 1.0.14, 1.1.11, 2.1.8 and 2.2.2
Today, we are releasing the .NET Core February 2019 Update. These updates contain security and reliability fixes. See the individual release notes for details on included reliability fixes.
Break When Value Changes: Data Breakpoints for .NET Core in Visual Studio 2019
“Why is this value changing unexpectedly and where or when is this occurring?!” This is a question many of us dread asking ourselves, knowing that we’ll have to do some tedious trial-and-error debugging to locate the source of this issue. For C++ developers, the exclusive solution to this problem has been the data breakpoint, a debugging tool allowing you to break when a specific object’s property changes. Fortunately, data breakpoints are no longer a C++ exclusive because they are now available for .NET Core (3.0 or higher) in Visual Studio 2019 Preview 2!
Announcing ML.NET 0.10 – Machine Learning for .NET
ML.NET is an open-source and cross-platform machine learning framework (Windows, Linux, macOS) for .NET developers. Using ML.NET, developers can leverage their existing tools and skillsets to develop and infuse custom AI into their applications by creating custom machine learning models.
A better multi-monitor experience with Visual Studio 2019
Visual Studio 2019 now supports per-monitor DPI awareness (PMA) across the IDE. PMA support means the IDE and more importantly, the code you work on appears crisp in any monitor display scale factor and DPI configuration, including across multiple monitors.
What’s new in Azure DevOps Sprint 146 Update
In this update, you can now simplify the organization of your work using the Basic process, easily create tables and add a query right into the Wiki plus more, and see updates to Azure Pipelines. Check out the video to learn more about these features.
Changes to the web and JSON editor APIs in Visual Studio 2019
In Visual Studio 2019 Preview 2, The Web Tools team made some changes to improve extensibility features for extension developers. To standardize interfaces, the CSS, HTML, JSON and CSHTML editors renamed their assemblies as per the following table:
5 Things You’ll Love in Xamarin.Forms 3.5
Although Valentine’s Day isn’t for a few more days, we just couldn’t wait to celebrate the love by sharing a new stable release of Xamarin.Forms – 3.5. Your engagement and contributions with Xamarin have been heartwarming, and we love working with you.
Adding caching to Azure Pipelines
For a long while, Azure Pipelines users have been asking to improve performance on the hosted build agents by adding caching for common scenarios like package restore. The issue came up in a recent popular Hacker News item, so we wanted to share an update.
Blazor 0.8.0 experimental release now available
Blazor 0.8.0 is now available! This release updates Blazor to use Razor Components in .NET Core 3.0 and adds some critical bug fixes.
What’s New in CMake – Visual Studio 2019 Preview 2
We have made a bunch of improvements to Visual Studio’s CMake support in the latest preview of the IDE. Many of these changes are taking the first steps to close the gap between working with solutions generated by CMake and the IDE’s native support. Please try out the preview and let us know what you think.
Azure DevOps Roadmap update for 2019 Q1
Last week we updated the Features Timeline to provide visibility on our key investments for this quarter. The features listed below link to the public roadmap project where you can find more details about each item.
Announcing TypeScript 3.3
Today we’re happy to announce the availability of TypeScript 3.3!
Using containerized services in your pipeline
Azure Pipelines has supported container jobs for a while now. You craft a container with exactly the versions of exactly the tools you need, and we’ll run your pipeline steps inside that container. Recently we expanded our container support to include service containers: additional, helper containers accessible to your pipeline.
Announcing F# 4.6 Preview
We’re excited to announce that Visual Studio 2019 will ship a new version of F# when it releases: F# 4.6!
Automating Releases in GitHub through Azure Pipelines
Do you own a GitHub repository? Do you create releases on GitHub to distribute software packages? Do you manually compile a list of changes to be included in release notes? If yes, you will be excited to know that you can now automate creation and modification of GitHub Releases directly from Azure Pipelines. This can be done through the GitHub Release task that is now rolled out to all users.
Concurrency Code Analysis in Visual Studio 2019 (C++)
The battle against concurrency bugs poses a serious challenge to C++ developers. The problem is exacerbated by the advent of multi-core and many-core architectures. To cope with the increasing complexity of multithreaded software, it is essential to employ better tools and processes to help developers adhere to proper locking discipline. In this blog post, we’ll walk through a completely rejuvenated Concurrency Code Analysis toolset we are shipping with Visual Studio 2019 Preview 2.
Debugging .NET Apps with Time Travel Debugging (TTD)
When you are debugging an application, there are many tools and techniques you can use, like logs, memory dumps and Event Tracing for Windows (ETW). In this post, we will talk about Time Travel Debugging, a tool used by Microsoft Support and product teams and more advanced users, but I encourage everyone to try this approach when diagnosing hard to find bugs.
Announcing .NET Core 3 Preview 2
Today, we are announcing .NET Core 3 Preview 2. It includes new features in .NET Core 3.0 and C# 8, in addition to the large number of new features in Preview 1. ASP.NET Core 3.0 Preview 2 is also released today. C# 8 Preview 2 is part of .NET Core 3 SDK, and was also released last week with Visual Studio 2019 Preview 2.
Enhanced in Visual Studio 2019: Search for Objects and Properties in the Watch, Autos, and Locals Windows
Are you inspecting many variables at once in the Locals window? Tired of constantly scrolling through the Watch window to locate the object you are currently interested in? New to Visual Studio 2019 for most languages (with some exclusions such as Xamarin, Unity, and SQL), you can now find your variables and their properties faster using the new search feature found in the Watch, Autos, and Locals windows!
C++ Productivity Improvements in Visual Studio 2019 Preview 2
Visual Studio 2019 Preview 2 contains a host of productivity features, including some new quick fixes and code navigation improvements:
Do more with patterns in C# 8.0
Visual Studio 2019 Preview 2 is out! And with it, a couple more C# 8.0 features are ready for you to try. It’s mostly about pattern matching, though I’ll touch on a few other news and changes at the end.
.NET Core tooling update for Visual Studio 2019 Preview 2
Another preview of Visual Studio 2019, another update on the cool stuff going into it! We’re pleased to announce some updates to the .NET Core tools for Visual Studio 2019. You can try these changes out starting with Preview 2. We’d love for you to try out these new features and give us feedback.
What’s New for Xamarin Developers in Visual Studio 2019 Preview 2
Today, Visual Studio 2019 Preview 2 was released and includes many improvements for mobile developers in Visual Studio. This release, we focused on key areas to make you more productive when authoring Xamarin apps, including optimizations to build and deployment times as well as improvements to our UI authoring experiences.
Visual Studio 2019 Preview 2 is now available
The second preview of Visual Studio 2019 is now available for download. This release contains a number of improvements and additions to the core experience and different development areas, many of which are a result of your direct feedback. As always, you can check out the release notes for more details or read on for the highlights.
Windows 10 SDK Preview Build 18317 available now!
Today, we released a new Windows 10 Preview Build of the SDK to be used in conjunction with Windows 10 Insider Preview (Build 18317 or greater). The Preview SDK Build 18317 contains bug fixes and under development changes to the API surface area.
Announcing TypeScript 3.3 RC
Today we’re happy to announce the availability of our release candidate (RC) of TypeScript 3.3. Our hope is to collect feedback and early issues to ensure our final release is simple to pick up and use right away.
Azure DevOps Server 2019 RC2 now available
Today, we released Azure DevOps Server 2019 RC2. This is our last planned prerelease before our final release of Azure DevOps Server 2019. RC2 includes some new features since RC1. You can upgrade from Azure DevOps Server 2019 RC1 or previous versions of TFS. You can find the full details in our release notes.
Visual Studio Mobile Developer Podcast: New Year – New Pod!
The Visual Studio Mobile Developer Podcast features Matt Soucoup and James Montemagno discussing the latest and greatest in mobile and cloud development.
Using Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) from .NET
Programs nowadays often need to download files and data from the internet – maybe they need new content, new configurations, or the latest updates. The Windows Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) is an easy way for programs to ask Windows to download files from or upload files to a remote HTTP or SMB file server. BITS will handle problems like network outages, expensive networks (when your user is on a cell plan and is roaming), and more.
Build an Azure IoT application with Cloud Explorer for Visual Studio
What we’ve heard and experienced ourselves is that when building applications, you have a frictionless experience when your code editor and tools are integrated and seamless. Yet when developing IoT apps, you often need to manage connected devices and send test messages between the device and IoT Hub at the same time that you’re debugging and working on your code. You’ll likely spend time switching between windows or even screens to monitor the messaging and many components of your development.
Help us help you! What desktop apps are you bringing to .NET Core 3.0?
Windows Desktop applications are coming to .NET Core. The recently released .NET Core 3.0 Preview 1 version includes WinForms and WPF support. To make .NET Core 3.0 viable for as many of you as possible, we have created a survey to understand the types of desktop applications you want to build with .NET Core. Based on the information you provide, we may contact some of you (if you agree) to collaborate on your .NET Core 3.0 efforts. We’ll learn from working with you how to improve the experience and documentation for bringing desktop applications to .NET Core.
Cross-Platform Development – Introducing the Xamarin.Forms Shell (MSDN Magazine)
Xamarin.Forms is a favored toolkit for cross-platform developers who love XAML and C#, because it maximizes code sharing while also providing full access to all the native platform APIs and UI controls. This capability comprises technologies and concepts that can be both exhilarating and confusing when you’re getting started. The truth is that some developers find it frustrating at the outset. You chose Xamarin to be productive, and the last thing you want to encounter is unwanted hassle. This year at Connect(); we’re thrilled to introduce Xamarin.Forms Shell, a new default starting point for mobile application d...
Better Player Engagement with Push Notifications in Unity Apps
In the world of mobile development, the ability to send targeted push notifications is one of the tools available to developers to help connect with users. In games, a well-timed push notification can deepen player engagement and increase daily active sessions. Adding and supporting push notifications has become so common that it could be considered a requirement for any app built today. Today, the Visual Studio App Center team is happy to add Unity to our supported platforms for Push Notifications and excited to have you get started today.
.NET Core January 2019 Updates – 2.1.7 and 2.2.1
Today, we are releasing the .NET Core January 2019 Update. These updates contain security and reliability fixes.
Announcing ML.NET 0.9 – Machine Learning for .NET
ML.NET is an open-source and cross-platform machine learning framework (Windows, Linux, macOS) for .NET developers. Using ML.NET, developers can leverage their existing tools and skillsets to develop and infuse custom AI into their applications by creating custom machine learning models.
Azure – 7 Tips and Tricks for Azure App Service (MSDN Magazine)
Azure Tips and Tricks (azuredev.tips) is a series that I created a year ago where I document my favorite secrets, shortcuts and handy features using Azure. I quickly came to appreciate the value of short and straight-to-the-point guidance for common scenarios that developers face every day. Over the last year I’ve gone from just a few posts to more than 150 tips spanning the entire Azure platform.
Azure SQL Database – Introducing Azure SQL Database Hyperscale (MSDN Magazine)
At the Ignite conference, we announced the public preview of Azure SQL Database Hyperscale, a new storage architecture providing a SQL-based and highly scalable service tier for databases that adapts on-demand to your workload’s needs. With Azure SQL Database Hyperscale, databases can quickly auto-scale up to 100TB, eliminating the need to pre-provision storage resources, and significantly expand the potential for app growth without being limited by storage size.
Starting the .NET Open Source Revolution
Today building open source software at Microsoft is normal — but when I started at Microsoft in 2007, it sure wasn’t. It took a few years to figure out the right thing to do and to get the big ship that is Microsoft turned into the wind of open source. But we’re there now and I look back on those early challenges with a smile. This is my story of the first successful open source project at Microsoft and how it paved the way to where we are today.
Build Visual Studio extensions using Visual Studio extensions
What if the community of extension authors banded together to add powerful features to Visual Studio that made it easier to create extensions? What if those features could be delivered in individually released extensions, but joined by a single installation experience that allows the user to choose which of the features to install? That’s the idea behind Extensibility Essentials – an extension pack that ships community-recommended extensions for extension authors.
Deck the Halls with an Improved Visual Studio App Center Portal UI
As we’re wrapping up 2018 here at Visual Studio App Center, our team is proud of the new features and functionality we’ve been able to deliver to you this year. Over the next two weeks, we want to share some improvements we’ve been doing behind the scenes, along with some new and exciting changes for 2019.
Azure – Deploy Your Code The Right Way with Azure Pipelines (MSDN Magazine)
Modern applications are increasingly complex systems that involve multiple technology stacks and cloud-native services. Orchestrating an automated release pipeline for these systems can be challenging. Azure Pipelines provides powerful, easy-to-use continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) services you can use to build and test your app and then deploy to your intended targets.
Machine Learning – Accelerate AI Solutions with Automated Machine Learning (MSDN Magazine)
Machine learning (ML) is being used in a wide range of applications, from autonomous cars and credit card fraud detection to predictive maintenance in manufacturing and beyond.
Q# – a Wish List for the New Year
In previous blog posts you have read about some of the ideas behind Q#, how it came into existence, and its development over the past year. You have read about quantum computing, quantum algorithms and what you can do with Q# today. With the end of the year approaching, there is only one more thing to cover: What is next?
Visual Studio – What’s New in Visual Studio 2019 (MSDN Magazine)
Visual Studio 2019 introduces exciting improvements and new features aimed at optimizing developer productivity and team collaboration. Whether you’re using Visual Studio for the first time or have been using it for years, you’ll benefit from features that improve all aspects of the development lifecycle—from smoother and more focused project creation to cloning from repository workflows, to driving the maintainability and quality of your code. Team and open source collaborative workflows are improved, as well.
.NET Core – What’s Coming in .NET Core 3.0 (MSDN Magazine)
.NET Core 3.0 is the next major version of the .NET Core platform. This article walks through the history of .NET Core and demonstrates how it has grown from basic support for Web and data workloads in version 1 to being able to run Web, desktop, machine learning, containers, IoT and more in version 3.0.
Machine Learning – ML.NET: The Machine Learning Framework for .NET Developers (MSDN Magazine)
The ML.NET library is a new open source collection of machine learning (ML) code that can be used to create powerful prediction systems. Many ML libraries are written in C++ with a Python API for easier programming. Examples include scikit-learn, TensorFlow, CNTK and PyTorch. However, if you use a Python-based ML library to create a prediction model, it’s not so easy for a .NET application to use the trained model. Fortunately, the ML.NET library can be used directly in .NET applications. And because ML.NET can run on .NET Core, you can create predictive systems for macOS and Linux, too.
Visual Studio – Collaborative Development with Visual Studio Live Share (MSDN Magazine)
I hope I’m not embarrassing myself to express how excited I am by Visual Studio Live Share! The first time I saw a demonstration of an early preview, I immediately found an excuse to use it in a live streaming session where Jeff Fritz and I worked on a .NET Core project together, each on our own computer, nearly 400 miles apart.
MSDN Magazine – Connect(); 2018 special digital edition (VS, .NET, SQL, ML & More)
Connect(); Special Issue 2018
.NET Framework December 2018 Security and Quality Rollup
This security update resolves a vulnerability in Microsoft .NET Framework that could allow remote code execution when Microsoft .NET Framework doesn’t validate input correctly. The attacker who successfully exploits this vulnerability could take control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts that use full user rights. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less affected than users who are granted administrative user rights.
Using multi-stage containers for C++ development
Containers are a great tool for configuring reproducible build environments. It’s fairly easy to find Dockerfiles that provide various C++ environments. Unfortunately, it is hard to find guidance on how to use newer techniques like multi-stage builds. This post will show you how you can leverage the capabilities of multi-stage containers for your C++ development. This is relevant to anyone doing C++ development regardless what tools you are using.
Build and deploy microservices on Azure Service Fabric Mesh
In the past couple of years, application developers have stopped questioning whether microservices are the right architecture to build scalable systems and started debating how to best implement them. I think this is due to several concepts that have converged in our industry in the past decade—all of which have to do with the need for businesses to bring innovation to their customers faster and faster.
Taking a closer look at Python support for Azure Functions
Azure Functions provides a powerful programming model for accelerated development and serverless hosting of event-driven applications. Ever since we announced the general availability of the Azure Functions 2.0 runtime, support for Python has been one of our top requests. At Microsoft Connect() last week, we announced the public preview of Python support in Azure Functions. This post gives an overview of the newly introduced experiences and capabilities made available through this feature.
Static websites on Azure Storage now generally available
Today we are excited to announce the general availability of static websites on Azure Storage, which is now available in all public cloud regions.
Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSH
The OpenSSH client and server are now available as a supported Feature-on-Demand in Windows Server 2019 and Windows 10 1809! The Win32 port of OpenSSH was first included in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update and Windows Server 1709 as a pre-release feature. In the Windows 10 1803 release, OpenSSH was released as a supported feature on-demand component, but there was not a supported release on Windows Server until now.
Get to code: How we designed the Visual Studio 2019 new start window
By now, many of you may have noticed a very prominent change to the launch of Visual Studio in Visual Studio 2019 Preview 1. Our goal with this new experience is to provide rapid access to the most common ways that developers get to their code: whether it’s cloning from an online repository or opening an existing project.
Visual Studio IntelliCode supports more languages and learns from your code
At Build 2018, we announced Visual Studio IntelliCode, a set of AI-assisted capabilities that improve developer productivity. IntelliCode includes features like contextual IntelliSense code completion recommendations, code formatting, and style rule inference.
A Year of Q#
The Quantum Architecture and Computation group launched Q#, our quantum computing programming language, a year ago on December 11th, 2017. Q# 0.1 was the result of a lot of hard work from a small, dedicated team of developers, researchers, and program managers. We had made the decision to build a domain-specific language for quantum computing about six months before we launched, so we were on a very tight schedule. We were lucky to have a great team of people who all pitched in and did what needed to be done so that we could meet our extremely aggressive timetable.
The Future of Mobile Development: Xamarin.Forms 4.0 Preview
Yesterday at Microsoft Connect(); 2018 we announced our plans for Xamarin.Forms 4.0 and shared a public preview. Let’s now take a deeper look at the big changes, starting with Xamarin.Forms Shell, and then touch some of the other highlights.
New Benefits in Visual Studio Subscriptions
Last week at Microsoft Connect();, we announced two new benefits to assist cloud migration for our users who have Visual Studio Subscriptions. If you missed the event or want to watch the on-demand trainings, check out the Connect(); event page. If you’re a current Visual Studio subscriber, activate your new benefits to get started right away. To learn more about our developer subscriptions and programs visit the Visual Studio website.
Announcing ML.NET 0.8 – Machine Learning for .NET
ML.NET is an open-source and cross-platform framework (Windows, Linux, macOS) which makes machine learning accessible for .NET developers. ML.NET allows you to create and use machine learning models targeting scenarios to achieve common tasks such as sentiment analysis, issue classification, forecasting, recommendations, fraud detection, image classification and more. You can check out these common tasks at our GitHub repo with ML.NET samples.
Open Sourcing XAML Behaviors for WPF
Today, we are excited to announce that we are open sourcing XAML Behaviors for WPF. In the past, we open sourced XAML Behaviors for UWP which has been a great success and the Behaviors NuGet package has been downloaded over 500k times. One of the top community asks has been to support WPF in the same way. XAML Behaviors for WPF now ships as a NuGet package – Microsoft.Xaml.Behaviors.Wpf .
New Azure DevOps Work Item Experience in Visual Studio 2019
In previous versions of Visual Studio, the work item experience was centered around queries, which need to be created and managed to find the right work items. In Visual Studio 2019, we have removed queries and added a new view for work items centered at the developer. This allows the developer to quickly find the work they need and associate them to their pending changes. Removing the need for queries.
Introducing ‘Suggest a Feature’ in Developer Community for Visual Studio
Customer feedback is a critical input to help us improve Visual Studio. Up until two years ago, the Visual Studio customer feedback system left room for improvement – customers could use the “send a smile” feature in Visual Studio, but this would result in only coarse-grained feedback such as “I like this” or “I don’t like this.” The feedback we got through this UI then went into a database our team accessed, but didn’t leave an easy way for customers to see the feedback that other customers were giving so they could say, “I have that problem too!” More than that, the back-end system that gathered feedback was se...
Windows Template Studio 2.5 released! (UWP)
We’re extremely excited to announce the Windows Template Studio 2.5! As always, we love how the community is helping. If you’re interested, please head over to head over to WTS’s GitHub.
What’s new in Azure DevOps Sprint 143 Update
Sprint 143 Update of Azure DevOps is rolling out to all organizations. In this update, draft pull requests is now available in Azure Repos which allows you to easily create work in progress that may not include everyone. We are also releasing new features in Azure Artifacts, including the ability to exclude files in artifact uploads and get provenance information on packages. Watch the following video to learn more about these features.
Open Sourcing XAML Behaviors for WPF
Today, we are excited to announce that we are open sourcing XAML Behaviors for WPF. In the past, we open sourced XAML Behaviors for UWP which has been a great success and the Behaviors NuGet package has been downloaded over 500k times.
Python at Microsoft: flying under the radar
Python is an important piece of Microsoft’s future in the cloud, being one of the essential languages for services and teams to support, as well as the most popular choice for the rapidly growing field of data science and analytics both inside and outside of the company. But Python hasn’t always had such a prestigious position around Microsoft.
Azure.Source – Volume 61
On Tuesday, December 4th, Microsoft Connect(); 2018 provided a full day of developer-focused content—including updates on Azure and Visual Studio, keynotes, demos, and real-time coding with experts. Scott Guthrie’s keynote provided all the Azure and Visual Studio news on how you can stay productive and focus on what matters to you.
Take C# 8.0 for a spin
Yesterday we announced the first preview of both Visual Studio 2019 (Making every developer more productive with Visual Studio 2019) and .NET Core 3.0 (Announcing .NET Core 3 Preview 1 and Open Sourcing Windows Desktop Frameworks).
Linking your GitHub commits with Azure Boards
Today, we’re announcing a new integration between Azure Boards and GitHub. Development teams using GitHub can now take advantage of the rich project management capabilities offered by Azure Boards, including Kanban boards, backlogs, sprint planning tools, queries, and multiple work item types.
Building an Open Source .NET Foundation
It was April, 3rd 2014 when Anders Hejlsberg, father of the C# language, got on stage during the keynote at the Build conference in San Francisco and released the .NET Compiler Platform (“Roslyn”) as open source and made the first pull request. That same keynote, Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President of Cloud & Enterprise group and one of the original creators of the ASP.NET web stack, announced the creation of the .NET Foundation. This was a pivotal point in .NET’s open source journey which spawned the avalanche of releasing software as open source at Microsoft. This is the story of the .NET Foundation.
How to develop secure applications using Azure Cosmos DB
Before we begin to discuss how to develop secure applications using Azure Cosmos DB, we should also highlight some of the different layers of security that Azure Cosmos DB offers. The following image illustrates these various layers of security:
Visual Studio Live Share for real-time code reviews and interactive education
Collaborating with your team using Visual Studio Live Share keeps getting easier! Since making Live Share available for the public use at BUILD last May, we’ve heard so much great feedback from our users, which has helped guide us in continuing to build a tool that truly enables developers to collaborate in all the ways they need from the comfort of their favorite tools.
Visual Studio IntelliCode supports more languages and learns from your code
At Build 2018, we announced Visual Studio IntelliCode, a set of AI-assisted capabilities that improve developer productivity. IntelliCode includes features like contextual IntelliSense code completion recommendations, code formatting, and style rule inference.
New Azure Pipelines announcements – VS Code extension, GitHub Releases, and more
Since we launched Azure Pipelines in September, we’ve seen strong growth in adoption of our cloud hosted build and deployment service. We’re also learning from many of the open source projects on GitHub starting to take advantage of unlimited build minutes, and with up to 10 concurrent jobs across our hosted Linux, Widows, and Mac machines. We’re seeing it make a positive difference to lots of cross-platform libraries and applications.
Using Visual Studio for Cross Platform C++ Development Targeting Windows and Linux
A great strength of C++ is the ability to target multiple platforms without sacrificing performance. If you are using the same codebase for multiple targets, then CMake is the most common solution for building your software. You can use Visual Studio for your C++ cross platform development when using CMake without needing to create or generate Visual Studio projects.
The Latest in Visual Studio 2017 for Mac – Version 7.7
Today, we are happy to share with you the next update to Visual Studio for Mac 2017. Version 7.7 incorporates much of your great feedback and is aimed at improving the core development experience for every project type from .NET Core to Xamarin and Unity. Below are just a few of the new features in Visual Studio 2017 for Mac 7.7 – for the full release notes, please read on here.
Announcing “30 Days of Microsoft Graph” Blog Series
Throughout the month of November 2018, we are publishing daily articles (30 total) that aim to introduce developers to Microsoft Graph. We’ll have content that covers 0-level to 200-level topics. Each post should take you 5-15 mins to read and try out the sample exercises. No prior knowledge of Microsoft Graph is required. We hope that beginners will quickly pick up the content and that experts will also learn a few new things.
Visual Studio 2019 Preview 1 now available
Today, in the Microsoft Connect(); 2018 keynote, Scott Guthrie announced the availability of Visual Studio 2019 Preview 1. This is the first preview of the next major version of Visual Studio. In this Preview, we’ve focused on a few key areas, such as making it faster to open and work with projects stored in git repositories, improving IntelliSense with Artificial Intelligence (AI) (a feature we call Visual Studio IntelliCode), and making it easier to collaborate with your teammates by integrating Live Share. With each preview, we’ll be adding capabilities, improving performance, and refining the user experience,...
Announcing .NET Core 3 Preview 1 and Open Sourcing Windows Desktop Frameworks
Today, we are announcing .NET Core 3 Preview 1. It is the first public release of .NET Core 3. We have some exciting new features to share and would love your feedback. You can develop .NET Core 3 applications with Visual Studio 2019 Preview 1, Visual Studio for Mac and Visual Studio Code.
Connect(); 2018 Xamarin Announcements
Today, at Microsoft Connect(); 2018, we have several exciting announcements about brand new capabilities and foundational improvements in the Xamarin platform driven by your generous feedback.
Announcing .NET Core 2.2
We’re excited to announce the release of .NET Core 2.2. It includes diagnostic improvements to the runtime, support for ARM32 for Windows and Azure Active Directory for SQL Client. The biggest improvements in this release are in ASP.NET Core.
Announcing ML.NET 0.8 – Machine Learning for .NET
ML.NET is an open-source and cross-platform framework (Windows, Linux, macOS) which makes machine learning accessible for .NET developers. ML.NET allows you to create and use machine learning models targeting scenarios to achieve common tasks such as sentiment analysis, issue classification, forecasting, recommendations, fraud detection, image classification and more. You can check out these common tasks at our GitHub repo with ML.NET samples.
Save the date to know what’s new with Visual Studio and Azure at Connect(); 2018
Build the apps of tomorrow, today. Tune in online on December 4, 2018 for a full day of dev-focused delight—including updates on Azure and Visual Studio, keynotes, demos, and real-time coding with experts—live from the Microsoft Azure and AI Conference.
Why do we need Q#?
You may be familiar with the Microsoft Quantum blog, which shares general news about our quantum computing program and about quantum computing in general. This blog is its developer- and community-focused partner. It will host technical posts, deep dives into the language and libraries, and tutorials. There will also be developer event announcements and recaps, new release information, and the like.
DevOps for Blockchain Apps
Blockchain has emerged from the shadow of its cryptocurrency origins to be seen as a transformative data technology that can power the next generation of software for multi-party Enterprise and consumer scenarios. With the trust and transparency that blockchain can deliver, this shared data technology is seen as a disruptor that can radically transform assumptions, costs, and approaches about how business is done.
Xamarin.Forms 3.4.0: Say Hello to ImageButton
As part of our long-term goal to have more frequent releases, we’re pleased to announce the release of Xamarin.Forms 3.4.0. As always, this release contains even more bug fixes and most notably, another new highly requested feature, an ImageButton!
Thanks, HockeyApp. Visual Studio App Center Will Take It From Here
One year ago, we announced Visual Studio App Center as the future of HockeyApp. During this journey we listened to you and have continued to improve App Center in every way. We started out with the next generation of your favorite HockeyApp services: distribution, crash reporting and analytics, and added new services exclusive to App Center: Build, Test and Push Notifications. But we didn’t stop there. We continued to build new features that make you even more productive.
Be the first to know what’s new and upcoming with Visual Studio and Azure at Connect(); 2018
Build the apps of tomorrow, today. Tune in online on December 4, 2018 for a full day of dev-focused delight—including updates on Azure and Visual Studio, keynotes, demos, and real-time coding with experts—live from the Microsoft Azure and AI Conference.
Official support for Windows 10 on ARM development
Today is an exciting day for Windows 10 on ARM. With the official release of Visual Studio 15.9, developers now have the officially supported SDK and tools for creating 64-bit ARM (ARM64) apps. In addition, the Microsoft Store is now officially accepting submissions for apps built for the ARM64 architecture.
Announcing Azure DevOps Server 2019 RC1
Yesterday, we announced Azure DevOps Server 2019 RC1. This is the evolution of TFS and the first release with our new brand and new navigation. We’ve added a ton of new features which you can read about in our release notes.
Blazor 0.7.0 experimental release now available
Blazor 0.7.0 is now available! This release focuses on enabling component coordination across ancestor-descendent relationships. We've also added some improvements to the debugging experience.
Introducing the Azure Blockchain Development Kit
“Developers! Developers! Developers!” That phrase is synonymous with Microsoft’s history of democratizing complex technologies and empowering anyone with an idea to build software.
Be the first to know what’s new and upcoming with Visual Studio and Azure at Connect(); 2018
Tune in online on December 4, 2018 for a full day of dev-focused delight—including updates on Azure and Visual Studio, keynotes, demos, and real-time coding with experts—live from the Microsoft Azure and AI Conference.
Visual Studio App Center Unity Editor Extension- A Better Unity Experience
Just a few weeks ago, we shipped our Unity SDK and support for Unity in Visual Studio App Center portal. We have been excited to see the reception so far, seeing many new Unity apps created using App Center. To help integrate more seamlessly into the tools you are already using, and make the experience better, the App Center team is happy to announce the release of the App Center Unity Editor Extension.
Visual Studio 2017 version 15.9 now available
Today, we are releasing Visual Studio 2017 version 15.9. The easiest way to update is directly from within Visual Studio 2017 by selecting Help>Check for Updates or select “Update” from the Visual Studio Installer. You can also download from the Visual Studio website to get the latest release of Visual Studio.
.NET Core tooling update for Visual Studio 2017 version 15.9
Starting with Visual Studio 2017 version 15.9, we’ve changed how the Visual Studio tooling for .NET consumes .NET Core SDKs. Prior to this change, installing a preview version of the .NET Core SDK would cause all Visual Studio tooling for .NET Core to use that SDK because it had a higher version.
Visual Basic in .NET Core 3.0
I’m excited about our plans for how Visual Basic.NET will be supported in .NET Core 3.0! Like other .NET languages, Visual Basic will continue to be supported on .NET Framework, and you do not need to make any changes to your application.
Tune in to Connect(); 2018 on December 4 for updates on Azure and Visual Studio
Tune in online on December 4, 2018 for a full day of dev-focused delight—including updates on Azure and Visual Studio, keynotes, demos, and real-time coding with experts—live from the Microsoft Azure and AI Conference.
When should you right click publish
Some people say ‘friends don’t let friends right click publish’ but is that true? If they mean that there are great benefits to setting up a CI/CD workflow, that’s true and we will talk more about these benefits in just a minute. First, let’s remind ourselves that the goal isn’t always coming up with the best long-term solution.
Announcing ML.NET 0.7 (Machine Learning .NET)
We’re excited to announce today the release of ML.NET 0.7 – the latest release of the cross-platform and open source machine learning framework for .NET developers (ML.NET 0.1 was released at //Build 2018). This release focuses on enabling better support for recommendation based ML tasks, enabling anomaly detection, enhancing the customizability of the machine learning pipelines, enabling using ML.NET in x86 apps, and more.
Building C# 8.0
The next major version of C# is C# 8.0. It’s been in the works for quite some time, even as we built and shipped the minor releases C# 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3, and I’m quite excited about the new capabilities it will bring.
XAML Islands – A deep dive – Part 2
Welcome to the 2nd post of our Xaml Islands deep dive adventure! On the first blog post, we talked a little bit about the history of this amazing feature, how the Xaml Islands infrastructure works and how to use it, and also a little bit of how you can leverage binding in your Island controls.
Tune in to Connect(); 2018 on December 4 for updates on Azure and Visual Studio
Tune in online on December 4, 2018 for a full day of dev-focused delight—including updates on Azure and Visual Studio, keynotes, demos, and real-time coding with experts—live from the Microsoft Azure and AI Conference.
A preview of UX and UI changes in Visual Studio 2019
Over the years, we’ve learned that sharing the evolution of Visual Studio, with you – our users – early and often helps us to deliver the best possible experience for our community. We’re excited to share today that, as part of the development of Visual Studio 2019, we’ve been looking to refresh our theme, update our product icon and splash screens, and help you get to your code faster. I’d like to walk you through our thinking behind the changes and show off the resulting user experience that you’ll encounter every day. By leaving a comment below or suggesting a feature (or reporting a bug!) in Developer Communi...
Video: Visual Studio Productivity in 5 minutes!
Check out the latest Visual Studio productivity tips in this 5 minute video! These tips for .NET developers will have you coding C# faster and better than ever before. This video includes a ton of navigation short cuts, codefixes and refactorings, multi-caret, code clean up, and more!
Use the official range-v3 with MSVC 2017 version 15.9
We’re happy to announce that the ongoing conformance work in the MSVC compiler has reached a new milestone: support for Eric Niebler’s range-v3 library. It’s no longer necessary to use the range-v3-vs2015 fork that was introduced for MSVC 2015 Update 3 support; true upstream range-v3 is now usable directly with MSVC 2017.
Windows 10 SDK Preview Build 18272 available now!
Today, we released a new Windows 10 Preview Build of the SDK to be used in conjunction with Windows 10 Insider Preview (Build 18272 or greater). The Preview SDK Build 18272 contains bug fixes and under development changes to the API surface area.
Exploring Clang Tooling Part 3: Rewriting Code with clang-tidy (C++)
In the previous post in this series, we used clang-query to examine the Abstract Syntax Tree of a simple source code file. Using clang-query, we can prototype an AST Matcher which we can use in a clang-tidy check to refactor code in bulk. This time, we will complete the rewriting of the source code.
Security fixes for Team Foundation Server
Today, we are releasing a fix for a potential cross site scripting (XSS) vulnerability. This impacts Team Foundation Server 2017 and 2018. We have released patches for TFS 2017 Update 3.1, TFS 2018 Update 1.1, and TFS 2018 Update 3. We have also released TFS 2018 Update 3.1, which is a full install that includes this fix.
Announcing .NET Standard 2.1
Since we shipped .NET Standard 2.0 about a year ago, we’ve shipped two updates to .NET Core 2.1 and are about to release .NET Core 2.2. It’s time to update the standard to include some of the new concepts as well as a number of small improvements that make your life easier across the various implementations of .NET.
XAML Islands – A deep dive – Part 1
XAML Islands is a technology that enables Windows developers to use new pieces of UI from the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) on their existing Win32 Applications, including Windows Forms and WPF technologies. This allows them to gradually modernize their apps at their own pace, making use of their current code as much as they want.
Move your first steps with .NET Core 3.0 for desktop development
If you're into development in the Microsoft ecosystem, I'm sure you're familiar with .NET Core. It's a new framework, built from scratch, to bring all the goodies of the .NET Framework into the new modern world. Unlike the full .NET Framework, which has its roots deeply integrated into Windows, .NET Core is cross-platform, lightweight and easily extensible.
Announcing .NET Framework 4.8 Early Access build 3673
We are happy to share the next Early Access build for the .NET Framework 4.8. This includes an updated .NET 4.8 runtime as well as the .NET 4.8 Developer Pack (a single package that bundles the .NET Framework 4.8 runtime, the .NET 4.8 Targeting Pack and the .NET Framework 4.8 SDK).
A first look at changes coming in ASP.NET Core 3.0
While we continue to work on finalizing the next minor version of ASP.NET Core, we’re also working on major updates to our next release that will include some changes in how projects are composed with frameworks, tighter .NET Core integration, and 3rd party open source integration, all with the goal of making it easier and faster for you to develop. For broader context around .NET Core 3.0, we encourage you to check out our previous announcements around the addition of WinForms and WPF support to .NET Core 3.0 on Windows. We’ll publish more details about new features coming in ASP.NET Core 3.0 in the near future.
Azure DevOps Roadmap update for 2018 Q4
In order to provide you with visibility into several of our key investments, we post quarterly updates to the roadmap on our Features Timeline page. Today, we’re sharing the latest for the final quarter of this calendar year. You’ll notice items are grouped by the quarter we anticipate delivering the feature to the hosted service and denote the version of the on-premises Azure DevOps Server we expect the feature to be included in.
Azure.Source – Volume 56
Live data local testing is now available for public preview in Azure Stream Analytics Visual Studio tools, which enables you to test jobs locally from the IDE using live event streams from Azure Event Hub, IoT Hub, and Blob Storage. The new local testing runtime can read live streaming data from the cloud or from a local static file. It works the same as the cloud runtime Azure Stream Analytics and therefore supports the same time policies needed for many testing scenarios. The query runs in a simulated environment suitable for a single server development environment and should only be used for query logic testin...
Announcing Windows Community Toolkit v5.0
I’m excited to announce the next major update of the Windows Community Toolkit, version 5.0. This update introduces the new WindowsXamlHost control built on top of the new XAML Islands APIs to simplify adding built-in or custom UWP control to a WPF or Windows Forms desktop application. Alongside, this version introduces new WinForms and WPF controls that leverage the WindowsXamlHost interfaces to wrap UWP platform controls such as the InkCanvas and the MapControl.
Local testing with live data means faster development with Azure Stream Analytics
We are excited to announce that live data local testing is now available for public preview in Azure Stream Analytics Visual Studio tools. Have you ever thought of being able to test Azure Stream Analytics queries logic with live data without running in the cloud? Are you excited by the possibility of not having to wait for your queries to deploy and other round-trip delays?
Bringing .NET application performance analysis to Linux
Both the Windows and Linux ecosystems have a swath of battle-hardened performance analysis and investigation tools. But up until recently, developers and platform engineers could use none of these tools with .NET applications on Linux.
Test Analytics in Azure Pipelines is now at your fingertips
You have walked the right path, adopted DevOps, setup tools for CI and CD and embraced continuous testing all the way in your software development process. Are you done?
Public preview: Named Entity Recognition in the Cognitive Services Text Analytics API
Today, we are happy to announce the public preview of Named Entity Recognition as part of the Text Analytics Cognitive Service. Named Entity Recognition (NER) is the ability to take free-form text and identify the occurrences of entities such as people, locations, organizations, and more. With just a simple API call, NER in Text Analytics uses robust machine learning models to find and categorize more than twenty types of named entities in any text documents.
Getting started with Universal Packages in Azure Artifacts
At the end of last sprint we flipped the switch on a new feature for Azure Artifacts called Universal Packages. With Universal Packages teams can store artifacts that don’t neatly fit into the other kinds of package types that we support. A Universal Package is just a collection of files that you’ve uploaded to our service and labelled with a name and version.
Visual Studio App Center Levels Up with Unity Support
Unity is one of the most popular and recognized game development platforms on the market to date. Microsoft has had a long-standing partnership with Unity, with Visual Studio Tools for Unity being the default installed editor experience for Unity developers around the world. Continuing in our quest to make mobile developers more productive, and better support the apps developers are building, the Visual Studio App Center team is excited to announce the public release of the App Center Unity SDK. This release enables developers to create Android, iOS and UWP Unity apps in the App Center portal, with support for ap...
ASP.NET SignalR 2.4.0 Preview 2
We’ve just released the second preview of the upcoming 2.4.0 release of ASP.NET SignalR. As we mentioned in our previous blog post on the future of ASP.NET SignalR we are releasing a minor update to ASP.NET SignalR (the version of SignalR for System.Web and/or OWIN-based applications) that includes, support for the Azure SignalR Service, as well as some bug fixes and minor features.
ExpressRoute for Azure DevOps
Today we are excited to announce that Azure DevOps is now available over Azure ExpressRoute. Customers who typically operate in the government and financial services sectors have requested this support because they want private connections that don’t go over the public Internet for security reasons. ExpressRoute also typically offers them more reliability, faster speeds, and lower latencies than typical Internet connections.
.NET Core Source Code Analysis with Intel® VTune™ Amplifier
Last year in the .NET blog, we discussed .NET Core Performance Profiling with Intel® VTune™ Amplifier 2018 including profiling Just-In-Time (JIT) compiled .NET Core code on Microsoft Windows* and Linux* operating systems. This year Intel VTune™ Amplifier 2019 was launched on September 12th, 2018 with improved source code analysis for .NET Core applications. It includes .NET Core support for profiling a remote Linux target and analyzing the results on a Windows host. We will walk you through a few scenarios to see how these new VTune Amplifier features can be used to optimize .NET Core applications.
Visual Studio App Center: A New But Familiar Upgrade for HockeyApp Customers
You’re a HockeyApp user and you’re using the service for beta distribution, crash reporting, and analytics for your Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows apps. You may also use the service’s powerful workflow integrations to help you better make better apps. It’s likely you’ve also heard of Visual Studio App Center and know that it’s somehow related to HockeyApp. In this post, I compare the two services, filling in the blanks for those customers who haven’t spent time with App Center. If you know the details about App Center, great! If you don’t, then I’m going to tell you why App Center offers even more than HockeyA...
Xamarin.Forms 3.3.0: Little Things, Huge Difference
The Xamarin.Forms team has been working closely with our open-source community to help fill in the “little things”. Things you’ve told us are important to building your mobile apps and being supremely productive in the process. Since Xamarin.Forms 3.0 shipped at Build 2018, we have been collaborating with you to deliver over 20 new features and fixes. With many more on the roadmap!
Announcing .NET Core 2.2 Preview 3
Today, we are announcing .NET Core 2.2 Preview 3. We have made more improvements to the overall release that we would love to get your feedback on, either in the comments or at dotnet/core #2004.
Announcing Entity Framework Core 2.2 Preview 3
Today we are making EF Core 2.2 Preview 3 available, together with a new preview of our data provider for Cosmos DB and updated spatial extensions for various providers.
Announcing TypeScript 3.1
If you haven’t heard of TypeScript, it’s a language that builds on top of modern JavaScript and adds static type-checking. When you write TypeScript code, you can use a tool like the TypeScript compiler to remove type-specific constructs, and rewrite any newer ECMAScript code to something that older browsers & runtimes can understand. Additionally, using types means that your tools can analyze your code more easily, and provide you with a rock-solid editing experience giving you things like code-completion, go-to-definition, and quick fixes. On top of that, it’s all free, open-source, and cross-platform, so i...
Azure.Source – Volume 54
Announcing the public preview of Azure Digital Twins - Azure Digital Twins is an Azure IoT service that creates comprehensive models of the physical environment. Among its many features is the ability to create spatial intelligence graphs to model the relationships and interactions between people, spaces, and devices. Announced at Ignite last month in Orlando, Azure Digital Twins is now available in Public Preview. To provide concrete examples of how partners are packaging the capabilities present in Azure Digital Twins to create digital twins of physical environments, below are images of what finished solutions ...
ASP.NET Core 2.2.0-preview3 now available
Today we’re very happy to announce that the third preview of the next minor release of ASP.NET Core and .NET Core is now available for you to try out. We’ve been working hard on this release, along with many folks from the community, and it’s now ready for a wider audience to try it out and provide the feedback that will continue to shape the release.
Complex Animations in Xamarin.Forms using Finite State Machine
If you have been a student of a technical specialty, you will surely remember the course devoted to the Finite State Machines.
Simplify extension development with PackageReference and the VSSDK meta package
Visual Studio 2017 version 15.8 made it possible to use the PackageReference syntax to reference NuGet packages in Visual Studio Extensibility (VSIX) projects. This makes it much simpler to reason about NuGet packages and opens the door for having a complete meta package containing the entire VSSDK.
Standard Library Algorithms: Changes and Additions in C++17
The C++14 standard already contains a wealth of different kinds of algorithms. C++17 adds a couple more algorithms and updates some existing ones. This article explains what’s new and what has changed in the C++17 Standard Library.
Protect your Xamarin.Android Apps at Runtime with Dotfuscator
In a previous blog we discussed obfuscating your Xamarin application with Dotfuscator Community to protect it from reverse-engineering. That kind of protection is an important and necessary layer in your application’s security posture, but it shouldn’t be the only layer. The application also needs to react to threats at runtime in order to protect its own integrity, and to protect the data that it accesses.
Automating Release Notes with Azure Functions
We can all agree that tracking the progress of a project enhances productivity and is an effective way to keep everyone involved of its progress. When it comes to managing your project in Azure DevOps (formerly VSTS) or GitHub, you have all of your artifacts in one place: code, CI/CD pipelines, releases, work items, and more. In cases where there’s a larger project with a larger team, the rate at which pull requests and work items are created, opened, and closed will increase significantly between each release. Imagine a large user base that wanted to stay updated on these changes and updates through release note...
What’s Next for Visual Studio for Mac
Since it was released a little more than a year ago, Visual Studio 2017 for Mac has grown from being an IDE primarily focused on mobile application development using Xamarin to one that includes support for all major .NET cross-platform workloads including Xamarin, Unity, and .NET Core. Our aspiration with Visual Studio for Mac is to bring the Visual Studio experiences that developers have come to know and love on Windows to the MacOS and to provide an excellent IDE experience for all .NET cross-platform developers.
Microsoft joins Open Invention Network to help protect Linux and open source
I’m pleased to announce that Microsoft is joining the Open Invention Network (“OIN”), a community dedicated to protecting Linux and other open source software programs from patent risk.
Fluent XAML Theme Editor Preview released!
As some of you may remember from our Build 2018 session this year, we previewed a tool using our new ColorPaletteResources API that allows you to set the color theme of your app through some simple color selections.
Visual Studio Roadmap Updates and Visual Studio 2019 Information
Yesterday, we covered What’s next for Visual Studio for Mac, and today we’ve updated our Visual Studio Roadmap so you can see the latest news about what we’re working on. We’re particularly excited to share this update since it includes information about the first preview of Visual Studio 2019, which we will make available by the end of this calendar year. We plan to have a generally available (GA) version of Visual Studio 2019 in the first half of 2019.
Using .NET Hardware Intrinsics API to accelerate machine learning scenarios
Hello everyone! This summer I interned in the .NET team, working on ML.NET, an open-source machine learning platform which enables .NET developers to build and use machine learning models in their .NET applications. The ML.NET 0.6 release just shipped and you can try it out today.
.NET Core October 2018 Update – NET Core 1.0 and 1.1
Today, we are releasing the .NET Core October 2018 Update for 1.0 and 1.1. This update includes .NET Core 1.0.13, 1.1.10 and .NET Core SDK 1.1.11.
Introducing ‘Suggest a Feature’ in Developer Community
Customer feedback is a critical input to help us improve Visual Studio. Up until two years ago, the Visual Studio customer feedback system left room for improvement - customers could use the "send a smile" feature in Visual Studio, but this would result in only coarse-grained feedback such as "I like this" or "I don't like this." The feedback we got through this UI then went into a database our team accessed, but didn't leave an easy way for customers to see the feedback that other customers were giving so they could say, "I have that problem too!" More than that, the back-end system that gathered feedback was ...
Announcing ML.NET 0.6 (Machine Learning .NET)
Today we're announcing our latest monthly release: ML.NET 0.6! ML.NET is a cross-platform, open source machine learning framework for .NET developers. We want to enable every .NET developer to train and use machine learning models in their applications and services. If you haven't tried ML.NET yet, here's how you can get started!
A fast, serverless, big data pipeline powered by a single Azure Function
A single Azure function is all it took to fully implement an end-to-end, real-time, mission critical data pipeline. And it was done with a serverless architecture. Serverless architectures simplify the building, deployment, and management of cloud scale applications. Instead of worrying about data infrastructure like server procurement, configuration, and management a data engineer can focus on the tasks it takes to ensure an end-to-end and highly functioning data pipeline.
Upgrade Your App with Sentiment Analysis (Xamarin)
Understanding the sentiment of an email or text message can be difficult. Someone may send a message, intending for it to be encouraging, but it may be accidentally interpreted as mean or condescending. Luckily, Microsoft's Text Analytics Service can help avoid any confusion.
Announcing ASP.NET SignalR 2.4.0 Preview 1
We recently released the first preview of the upcoming 2.4.0 release of ASP.NET SignalR. As we mentioned in our previous blog post on the future of ASP.NET SignalR we are releasing a new minor update to ASP.NET SignalR (the version of SignalR for System.Web and/or OWIN-based applications) that includes, support for the Azure SignalR Service, as well as some bug fixes and minor features.
Update on .NET Core 3.0 and .NET Framework 4.8
In May, we announced .NET Core 3.0, the next major version of .NET Core that adds support for building desktop applications using WinForms, WPF, and Entity Framework 6. We also announced some exciting updates to .NET Framework which enable you to use the new modern controls from UWP in existing WinForms and WPF applications.
Visual Studio 2017 version 15.9 Preview 3
Today, we are releasing the third preview of Visual Studio 2017 version 15.9. You can download it here and share your feedback with our engineering teams. This release includes ARM64 support in UWP apps as well as improvements to Xamarin and TypeScript. Continue reading below for an overview the fixes and new features. If you'd like to see the full list, check out the release notes for more details.
Testing Xamarin Applications with Visual Studio App Center
Frequent testing of your software is a key to success. As mentioned in my previous article "Mobile CI/CD 101" it's not easy to cover an entire mobile application with just regular unit tests. Most mobile applications depend on the user interface and platform-specific features that make true Test-Driven Design (TDD) with solely unit tests extremely challenging It's better to split automatic testing in two parts: cover the Data Access Layer with unit tests and cover the Business Logic, User Interface, and platform features with UI tests. You can do both types of testing with your Visual Studio App Center CI/CD pipe...
Visual Studio 2017 and Visual Studio for Mac Support Updates
As we work to bring you Visual Studio 2019, our team will release the final update to Visual Studio 2017, version 15.9, in the coming months; you can try a preview of version 15.9 here. We'd love your feedback on this release as we finish it up; use Report-a-Problem to submit issues.
Use Hybrid Connections to Incrementally Migrate Applications to the Cloud
As the software industry shifts to running software in the cloud, organizations are looking to migrate existing applications from on-premises to the cloud. Last week at Microsoft’s Ignite conference, Paul Yuknewicz and I delivered a talk focused on how to get started migrating applications to Azure (watch the talk free) where we walked through the business case for migrating to the cloud, and choosing the right hosting and data services.
Start developing on Windows 10 October 2018 Update today
We’re excited to announce that the Windows 10 October 2018 Update (build 17763) and SDK is now available. You may also know this as Windows 10, version 1809.
DirectX Raytracing and the Windows 10 October 2018 Update
The wait is finally over: we’re taking DirectX Raytracing (DXR) out of experimental mode!
Blazor 0.6.0 experimental release now available
Blazor 0.6.0 is now available! This release includes new features for authoring templated components and enables using server-side Blazor with the Azure SignalR Service. We're also excited to announce our plans to ship the server-side Blazor model as Razor Components in .NET Core 3.0!
.NET Core October 2018 Update – NET Core 2.1.5 & SDK 2.1.403
Today, we are releasing the .NET Core October 2018 Update. This update includes .NET Core 2.1.5 and .NET Core SDK 2.1.403 and contains important reliability fixes.
CUDA 10 is now available, with support for the latest Visual Studio 2017 versions
We are pleased to echo NVIDIA announcement for CUDA 10 today, and particularly excited about CUDA 10.0's Visual Studio compatibility. CUDA 10.0 will work with all the past and future updates of Visual Studio 2017. To stay committed to our promise for a Pain-free upgrade to any version of Visual Studio 2017, we partnered closely with NVIDIA for the past few months to make sure CUDA users can easily migrate between Visual Studio versions. Congratulations to NVIDIA for this milestone and thank you for a great collaboration!
Analytics will be available on TFS 2019 RC1 – Want to help us test it?
Analytics is the new reporting platform for both Team Foundation Server (TFS) and Azure DevOps. Analytics will be available with TFS 2019 RC1, which should be available later this year.
The Ship List: Visual Studio App Center September Edition
September has come and gone all to quickly for us on the Visual Studio App Center team. Like many of you, we were excited to learn about the latest mobile software and hardware updates coming to both consumers as well as developers. We have also spent time continuing to ship even more improvements to the app distribution experience. With that said, let us dive right in to the latest releases from App Center that you can use today.
How to upgrade extensions to support Visual Studio 2019
Recently, I've updated over 30 of my extensions to support Visual Studio 2019 (16.0). To make sure they work, I got my hands on a very early internal build of VS 2019 to test with (working on the Visual Studio team has its benefits). This upgrade process is one of the easiest I've ever experienced.
Step Back – Going Back in C++ Time
In the most recent, 15.9, update to Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise Edition, we've added "Step Back" for C++ developers targeting Windows 10 Anniversary Update (1607) and later. With this feature, you can now return to a previous state while debugging without having to restart the entire process. It's installed as part of the C++ workload but set to "off" by default. To enable it, go to Tools -> Options -> IntelliTrace and select the "IntelliTrace snapshots" option. This will enable snapshots for both Managed and Native code.
Azure Pipelines is the CI/CD solution for any language, any platform, any cloud
As previously announced, Azure Pipelines is the Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) solution for any language, application, or platform. Azure Pipelines has evolved in last couple of years as we are seeing customers use this service for both enhanced CI/CD functionality, and as a dedicated CI/CD service to use in their DevOps toolchains.
Getting started writing Visual Studio extensions
It’s easy to create a new extensibility project in Visual Studio, but unless you understand the basics of how the extensibility system works, then you are setting yourself up for failure.
Books on C++17
C++17 is an important evolution of the C++ language, and you may be wondering how you should get started learning about it. On our blog, you will always find the latest announcements related to our team’s work on C++17 and future standards and, as part of this new series, advice on any C++17 related topics you’ve asked us about. But many of you may also want the more systematic approach to learning, an approach that books can give you when absorbing such a large topic.
Experimentation using Azure Machine Learning
We are pleased to announce public preview refresh of the Azure Machine Learning (AML) service. The refresh contains many new improvements that increase the productivity of data scientists.
Using the Android Designer Split View
The ability to see the design view and layout XML at the same time, side by side, was one of our most requested features for the Android Designer. With Split View, new in the Visual Studio 2017 version 15.8 release, you can switch back & forth freely between both modes of working. Edit the layout XML to see the changes immediately previewed in the designer or make changes in the designer and see the XML update. (Note: Split View is currently just available on Windows, not yet on Visual Studio for Mac.)
How Microsoft rewrote its C# compiler in C# and made it open source
Roslyn is the codename-that-stuck for the open-source compiler for C# and Visual Basic.NET. Here’s how it started in the deepest darkness of last decade’s corporate Microsoft, and became an open source, cross-platform, public language engine for all things C# (and VB, which I’ll take as a given for the rest of this piece).
.NET Framework September 2018 Preview of Quality Rollup
Late last week we released the September 2018 Preview of Quality Rollup.
Azure DevOps Reporting – What reports do you want?
If you are using Azure DevOps – we want to hear what reporting metrics are important to you. We’ve authored a short survey to gather this data.
The top 6 ways to boost ratings, reviews, and feedback for your app
A frequent question we get from developers is, “How can I encourage customers to review and give feedback on my app?â€
Get Ready for iOS 12 and Xcode 10
Support for iOS 12 and Xcode 10 to accompany Apple’s Xcode Gold Master (GM) release has just been announced! We have also published updated documentation and samples to help you quickly get started with all the latest new features. Now, build your Xamarin.iOS (and of course Xamarin.Forms for iOS) applications with Xcode 10 GM and submit your iOS 12, tvOS 12, and watchOS 5 applications to the Apple App Store.
Navigation Update for Azure DevOps
Back in June of this year, we rolled out the first iteration of our new navigation model for Azure DevOps. We’ve spent the summer improving that experience based on the feedback many of you have provided. Thank you! Our next step is to move from the new model being a preview, to becoming the navigation for the product.
Introducing Azure Functions 2.0
Today, we’re very pleased to announce the general availability of Azure Functions 2.0! This is a huge milestone packed with several capabilities, all focused around making it easier than ever for you to build highly scalable serverless applications.
Team Foundation Server 2018 Update 3 and Update 1.1 are available
Last week, we released both TFS 2018 Update 3 and TFS 2018 Update 1.1. Here are the key links:
Announcing .NET Framework 4.8 Early Access build 3646
Today, we are happy to share an Early Access build for the .NET Framework 4.8. This includes an updated .NET 4.8 runtime as well as the .NET 4.8 Developer Pack (a a single package that bundles the .NET Framework 4.8 runtime, the .NET 4.8 Targeting Pack, and the .NET Framework 4.8 SDK).
Parallel Custom Build Tools in Visual Studio 2017 (C++)
Many projects need to use additional tools during their build to generate sources for further compilation or perform other custom build tasks. VC projects have always supported Custom Build Tool integration, but it had some limitations. One of the popular requests on UserVoice is Allow custom build tools to run in parallel. Another problem is that often custom build outputs need to be passed to other build tools (for instance, some tools can generate C/C++ sources, which need to be passed to the compiler) and there was no easy way to specify that.
ASP.NET Core in Visual Studio for Mac – Help us build the best experience
We are working to improve the experience for ASP.NET Core developers in Visual Studio for Mac. If you are working on ASP.NET Core apps in Visual Studio for Mac, we would love to hear you feedback. Your feedback is important so that we can help shape the future of ASP.NET Core in Visual Studio for Mac.
Announcing new REST API’s for Process Customization (Azure DevOps)
Last sprint we released a new set of REST API endpoints for process customization. In version 4.1 there are 3 sets of REST API’s. Two for the inherited model and one for the Hosted XML model. This created some confusion on what endpoints to use and when. In the new 5.0 (preview) version we combined the two inherited REST API’s under a single domain. Making it much easier to determine what REST API endpoints to use. What domain you need depends on the process model used by your projects.
Xamarin.Forms 3.2.0 Released: Going Big with Little Things
Xamarin.Forms 3.2.0 continues the theme of previous releases to give you big wins by making little things much easier to do. The entire version 3 series has been about reducing the friction of doing such things as positioning the Android tabs to the bottom, controlling spellcheck and capitalization and prediction on text controls. There are even trivial improvements to setting ImeOptions, coloring various elements of switches and bars, and so many more.
The future of ASP.NET SignalR
In ASP.NET Core 2.1, we brought SignalR into the ASP.NET Core family. Many of our users have asked what this means for the previous version of SignalR: ASP.NET SignalR.
Deep dive into Azure Repos
With the introduction of Azure DevOps, we’re offering developers a new Git service called Azure Repos. It has unlimited free private repositories with collaborative code reviews, advanced file management, code search, and branch policies to ensure high quality code. Azure Repos is great for small projects as well as large organizations that need native AAD support and advanced policies.
Team Foundation Server 2018 Update 3 and Update 1.1 are available
Last week, we released both TFS 2018 Update 3 and TFS 2018 Update 1.1. Here are the key links:
Announcing TypeScript 3.1 RC
Today we’re happy to announce the availability of the release candidate (RC) of TypeScript 3.1. Our intent with the RC is to gather any and all feedback so that we can ensure our final release is as pleasant as possible.
Windows 10 SDK Preview Build 17754 available now!
Today, we released a new Windows 10 Preview Build of the SDK to be used in conjunction with Windows 10 Insider Preview (Build 17754 or greater). The Preview SDK Build 17754 contains bug fixes and under development changes to the API surface area.
Deep dive into Azure Boards
Azure Boards is a service for managing the work for your software projects. Teams need tools that flex and grow. Azure Boards does just that, brining you a rich set of capabilities including native support for Scrum and Kanban, customizable dashboards, and integrated reporting.
How can I pause my code in Visual Studio?: Breakpoints FAQ
Have you ever found a bug in your code and wanted to pause code execution to inspect the problem? If you are a developer, there’s a strong chance you have experienced or will experience this issue many, many times. While the short and sweet answer to this problem is to use a breakpoint, the longer answer is that Visual Studio actually provides multiple kinds of breakpoints and methods that let you pause your code depending on the context! Based on the different scenarios you may experience while debugging, here are some of the various ways to pause your code and set or manage a breakpoint in Visual Studio 2017:
A (Belated) Welcome to C# 7.3
Better late than never! Some of you may have noticed that C# 7.3 already shipped, back in Visual Studio 2017 update 15.7. Some of you may even be using the features already.
Announcing ML.NET 0.5
Today, coinciding with the .NET Conf 2018, we’re announcing the release of ML.NET 0.5. It’s been a few months already since we released ML.NET 0.1 at //Build 2018, a cross-platform, open source machine learning framework for .NET developers. While we’re evolving through new preview releases, we are getting great feedback and would like to thank the community for your engagement as we continue to develop ML.NET together in the open.
Announcing Entity Framework Core 2.2 Preview 2 and the preview of the Cosmos DB provider and spatial extensions for EF Core
Today we are making EF Core 2.2 Preview 2 available, together with a preview of our data provider for Cosmos DB and new spatial extensions for our SQL Server and in-memory providers.
What’s new in Azure DevOps Launch Update (formerly known as VSTS)
We shared some exciting news this morning on the Azure blog: We’re bringing Azure DevOps to developers and enterprises around the world who need flexible and efficient tools for their development process. With the evolution of Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) into Azure DevOps, current VSTS customers will shortly receive a Launch Update that seamlessly delivers our five new Azure DevOps services, user interface, and much more.
How to get started with Azure and .NET
Azure is a big cloud with lots of services, and for even the most experienced user it can be intimidating to know which service will best meet your needs. This blog post is intended to provide a short overview of the most common concepts and services .NET developers need get started and provide resources to help you learn more.
Watch the .NET Conf Live! – Sept 12-14 (Xamarin Blog)
The 3-day virtual developer conference co-organized by the .NET community and Microsoft is finally here! Now the question is how and where to watch the .NET Conf which will be completely live-streamed. It is the perfect opportunity to enhance your skills, ask questions to a live audience, and get inspired for your next project.
Why Would Prosthetic Arms Need to See or Connect to Cloud AI?
There are over 1 million new amputees every year, i.e. one every 30 seconds – a truly shocking statistic. The World Health Organization estimates that between 30 to 100 million people around the world are living with limb loss today. Unfortunately, only 5-15% of this population has access to prosthetic devices.
Using C++17 Parallel Algorithms for Better Performance
C++17 added support for parallel algorithms to the standard library, to help programs take advantage of parallel execution for improved performance. MSVC first added experimental support for some algorithms in 15.5, and the experimental tag was removed in 15.7.
Visual Studio 2017 version 15.9 Preview 2
Today, we are releasing the second preview of Visual Studio 2017 version 15.9, and it can be downloaded here. This latest preview contains new features and improvements to Universal Windows Platform development, C++ debugging, and export installation settings. Read more in the feature highlight summary below and check out the Visual Studio 2017 version 15.9 Preview 2 release notes for more details on all the new, exciting features contained in this Preview.
Azure.Source – Volume 48
Now in preview Avere vFXT for Microsoft Azure now in public preview - The Avere vFXT for Azure is a high-performance cache for HPC workloads in the cloud that provides low-latency access to Azure compute from Azure Blob and file-based storage locations. The Avere vFXT for Azure has no charge associated with licensing; however, costs associated with consumption do apply at normal rates. Avere Systems joined Microsoft earlier this year.
Join us for our live streaming Azure DevOps Keynote Sept 11th at 8AM Pacific. Learn more and save-the-date
Join us for two days of live streaming activity that will help you learn all the details of what was announced for Azure DevOps set of services for developers, Azure Pipelines CI/CD platform and new GitHub extensions from Microsoft.
Introducing Azure DevOps, an evolution of VSTS for modern developers and Enterprise customers
Today we are announcing Azure DevOps. Working with our customers and developers around the world, it’s clear DevOps has become increasingly critical to a team’s success. Azure DevOps captures over 15 years of investment and learnings in providing tools to support software development teams. In the last month, over 80,000 internal Microsoft users and thousands of our customers, in teams both small and large, used these services to ship products to you.
Announcing Azure Pipelines, a new fully managed CI/CD service with unlimite minutes FREE for open source projects
With the introduction of Azure DevOps today, we’re offering developers a new CI/CD service called Azure Pipelines that enables you to continuously build, test, and deploy to any platform or cloud. It has cloud-hosted agents for Linux, macOS, and Windows, powerful workflows with native container support, and flexible deployments to Kubernetes, VMs, and serverless environments.
Improving your productivity in the Visual Studio Editor
Over the last few updates to Visual Studio 2017, we’ve been hard at work adding new features to boost your productivity while you’re writing code. Many of these are the result of your direct feedback coming from the UserVoice requests, Developer Community tickets, and direct feedback we’ve encountered while talking to developers like you.
Managing User Secrets
In this episode, Robert is joined by Andrew Cheung and Alicia Chan, who show how Visual Studio can help you stop storing sensitive data like connection strings and other user secrets in your code. They show how to store secrets locally in json or XML files and how to store them in Azure Key Vault.
Introduction to Azure Durable Functions
Azure Durable Functions is a new programming model based on Microsoft serverless’ platform Azure Functions. It allows you to write a workflow as code and have the execution run with the scalability and the reliability of serverless with high throughput.
Discover the world of .NET at the .NET Conf
.NET Conf is a FREE, 3 day virtual developer event co-organized by the .NET community and Microsoft. Over the course of the three days you have a wide selection of live sessions streaming here that feature speakers from the community and .NET product teams. It's a chance to learn, ask questions live, and get inspired for your next software project.
Azure.Source – Volume 47
Now generally available Announcing general availability of Azure IoT Hub’s integration with Azure Event Grid - IoT Hub integration with Azure Event Grid is now generally available, making it even easier to transform business insights from billions of devices sending their data to the cloud into actions by simplifying the architecture of IoT solutions. Now you can easily integrate with modern serverless architectures, such as Azure Functions and Azure Logic Apps, to automate workflows and downstream processes; enable alerting with quick reaction to creation, deletion, connection, and disconnection of devices; and ...
Monitoring environmental conditions near underwater datacenters using Deep Learning
At Microsoft, we put our cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the hands of those working to solve global environmental challenges, through programs such as AI for Earth. We also use these same tools to understand our own interaction with the environment, such as the work being done in concert with Project Natick.
Using the New Xamarin.Forms Controls Toolbox
Xamarin.Forms empowers you to deliver the same experience to multiple platforms. Using a set of UI elements abstracted from common mobile app controls, like text inputs and buttons, you can quickly create a functional cross-platform UI. Xamarin.Forms compiles these generic controls down to the platform-specific version, maintaining the native look and feel of your app. Likewise, you can easily customize the controls to a specific look and feel for your app. Today, we are excited to debut the Xamarin.Forms Controls Toolbox as part of Visual Studio 2017 version 15.8 and Visual Studio for Mac version 7.6. The toolbo...
Helping Go developers build better cloud apps faster
As GopherCon kicks off today with nearly 2,000 gophers gathering in Denver, we’re excited to share our latest offerings and announcements for Go developers. Since making the Azure SDK for Go generally available earlier this year, our teams have been hard at work building Go tools and services for Azure, Visual Studio Code, and Visual Studio Team Services.
TypeScript and Babel 7
Today we’re excited to announce something special for Babel users. Over a year ago, we set out to find what the biggest difficulties users were running into with TypeScript, and we found that a common theme among Babel users was that trying to get TypeScript set up was just too hard. The reasons often varied, but for a lot of developers, rewiring a build that’s already working can be a daunting task.
Mobile CI/CD 101 with App Center
Mobile DevOps falls under the umbrella of enterprise DevOps, since mobile applications are primarily a user interface for interacting with external IT systems. Mobile teams tend to have a much smaller scale, however, plus has its own unique challenges in multiple platforms and devices.
Top Stories from the Microsoft DevOps Community – 2018.08.24
I don’t know about y’all, but it’s been a long week here on the VSTS team. I’m beat! And when I’m tired, it gets hard to focus on those little letters on my LCD. So this week I’m linking you to a bunch of great content that you don’t have to read!
Azure.Source – Volume 46
Now in preview Reduce your exposure to brute force attacks from the virtual machine blade - One way to reduce exposure to an attack is to limit the amount of time that a port on your virtual machine is open. Ports only need to be open for a limited amount of time for you to perform management or maintenance tasks. Just-In-Time VM Access helps you control the time that the ports on your virtual machines are open. It leverages network security group (NSG) rules to enforce a secure configuration and access pattern.
Announcing general availability of Azure IoT Hub’s integration with Azure Event Grid
We’re proud to see more and more customers using Azure IoT Hub to control and manage billions of devices, send data to the cloud and gain business insights. We are excited to announce that IoT Hub integration with Azure Event Grid is now generally available, making it even easier to transform these insights into actions by simplifying the architecture of IoT solutions.
Azure Cloud Shell editor | Azure Friday [Video]
Justin Luk joins Scott Hanselman to show the new Azure Cloud Shell editor. Since its launch, Cloud Shell included a variety of editors (vi, emacs, and nano) for editing files. In collaboration with the Visual Studio Code team and their open-source Monaco project, the same web standards-based editor that powers Visual Studio Code is now integrated directly into Cloud Shell.
A Microsoft DevSecOps Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Exercise
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) is a critical DevSecOps practice. As engineering organizations accelerate continuous delivery to impressive levels, it’s important to ensure that continuous security validation keeps up. To do so most effectively requires a multi-dimensional application of static analysis tools. The more customizable the tool, the better you can shape it to your actual security risk.
Visual Studio for Mac version 7.6
Today we are announcing the release of Visual Studio for Mac version 7.6. Our focus with this release has been to improve product reliability in various areas, with a special focus on the code editing experience. We have also made several fixes that improve IDE performance. Finally, we’ve extended our support for Azure functions with the addition of new templates and the ability to publish your function to Azure from within the IDE.
Unit Testing Tools in Visual Studio 2017 [Video]
In this video, Robert is joined by Kendra Havens, who shows us some of the excellent unit test tooling in Visual Studio 2017, including testing performance improvements [03:57], Hierarchy View in the Test Explorer [05:13], generating unit tests [09:35], Intellitest [10:50], code coverage [16:10] and Live Unit Testing [19:10].
.NET Core August 2018 Update
Today, we are releasing the .NET Core August 2018 Update. This update includes .NET Core 2.1.3 and .NET Core SDK 2.1.401.
What’s new in VSTS Sprint 138 Update
The Sprint 138 Update of Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) has rolled out to all organizations. In this update, test results for releases have been enhanced to group together test attempts and summarize better. Watch the following video to learn about this and a few of the other new features.
Moving from Hosted XML Process to Inherited Process in VSTS – Generally Available
Last month we announced a private preview that allows you to move projects that use a Hosted XML process to an Inherited process. We received a fare share of feedback, watched the telemetry, and made some fixes. This week we announced that the feature is now generally available! If you are using Hosted XML, and you are ready to move to the modern inherited process model, please give it a try. If you have any questions or issues send us an email
Catch up on what’s new in Azure: Azure.Source – Volume 45
Announcing VNet service endpoints general availability for MySQL and PostgreSQL - Virtual network service endpoints for Azure Database for MySQL and PostgreSQL in all regions where the service is available for General Purpose and Memory Optimized servers. You can use virtual network service endpoints to isolate connectivity to your logical server from only a subnet or a set of subnets within your virtual network. The traffic to Azure Database for MySQL from your virtual network always stays within the Azure backbone network. Preference for this direct route is over any specific routes that take internet traffic t...
Important dates regarding apps with Windows Phone 8.x and earlier and Windows 8/8.1 packages submitted to Microsoft Store
As a part of our Windows device life cycle, Microsoft Store will soon stop accepting new apps with Windows Phone 8.x or earlier or Windows 8/8.1 packages (XAP and APPX). Soon after that date, we will stop distributing app updates to Windows Phone 8.x or earlier and Windows 8/8.1 devices; at that time, updates will only be made available to customers using Windows 10 devices.
Bing.com runs on .NET Core 2.1!
Bing.com is a cloud service that runs on thousands of servers spanning many datacenters across the globe. Bing servers handle thousands of users’ queries every second from consumers around the world doing searches through their browsers, from our partners using the Microsoft Cognitive Services APIs, and from the personal digital assistant, Cortana. Our users demand both relevancy and speed in those results, thus performance and reliability are key components in running a successful cloud service such as Bing.
Attend A .NET Conf Event Near You!
If you have not yet heard of the .NET Conf, it is a FREE, 3-day virtual developer event co-organized by the .NET community and Microsoft. There is a wide selection of live sessions with feature speakers streamed directly from communities around the world and by the .NET product teams. It is your chance to enhance your skills, ask questions to a live audience, and get inspired for your next project.
Improvements in Visual Studio 2017 15.8 for web developers
This week we released Visual Studio 2017 version 15.8. Our 15.8 update brings the following improvements for web developers:
Announcing F# 4.5
Today, we’re incredibly pleased to announce general availability of F# 4.5. This post will walk through the changes in F# 4.5 (just like the preview post), then show some updates to F# tooling, and finally talk a bit about where what we’re thinking about for the next F# version.
Top 5 Mobile App Security Failures and How To Prevent Them
In the race to get innovative new mobile apps or cool new features added to existing mobile apps out the door faster, secure coding practices in mobile app development aren’t always at the top of every developer’s list. In fact, our NowSecure benchmarks show that some 85 percent of iOS and Android apps in the Apple App Store and Google Play have 1 or more security issues and bugs (i.e. security vulnerabilities). Wow, that’s pretty rough security stat to say the least!
Using MSVC in a Docker Container for Your C++ Projects
Containers encapsulate the runtime environment of an application: the file system, environment settings, and virtualized OS are bundled into a package. Docker containers have changed the way we think about build and test environments since they were introduced five years ago.
Preview: iOS 12 development with Xamarin
The latest Xamarin preview release supports Xcode 10 beta 5, which includes beta SDKs for iOS 12, macOS Mojave (10.14), watchOS 5, and tvOS 12.
App Center Test: Android 9 Pie Support, 3000+ Real Devices, Improved Test Notifications and More
In today’s fast-moving mobile world, it’s imperative to deliver high quality experiences on the latest platforms and operating systems. We are excited to announce Visual Studio App Center has same-day Test framework and device support for Android 9 Pie! Get ahead of any breaking changes to your app that could be caused by this major platform update. Bring your preferred testing tools, App Center supports the most popular Android UI automation testing frameworks: Espresso, Xamarin.UITest, and Appium.
Make your Visual Studio Team Services dashboard part of your conversation in Microsoft Teams
Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) Dashboards help keep track of your project and drive collaboration with your team. Starting today, you can bring your VSTS dashboards right where the conversation is happening in Microsoft Teams (MS Teams). MS Teams is Microsoft’s chat and collaboration platform.
Visual Studio 2017 version 15.8 now available
Today we are releasing Visual Studio 2017 version 15.8. In this version we have focused on productivity, performance and bug fixes. There are many new features you‘ll find useful, but in this post, I’ll underscore the highlights you may be most interested in. For the complete list of all the updates in today’s release, check out the Visual Studio 2017 version 15.8 release notes and list of bugs submitted by you that are fixed. If you prefer to first try these updates without installing the release, check out the Visual Studio images in Azure.
What is Artificial Intelligence?
It has been said that Artificial Intelligence will define the next generation of software solutions. If you are even remotely involved with technology, you will almost certainly have heard the term with increasing regularity over the last few years.
Catch up on what’s new in Azure: Azure.Source – Volume 44
Announcing the public preview of Windows Container Support in Azure App Service - Windows Server Containers in Web App are now available in public preview. Azure App Service provides pre-defined application stacks on Windows like ASP.NET or Node.js, running on IIS. The preconfigured Windows environment locks down the operating system from administrative access, software installations, changes to the global assembly cache, and so on. If your application requires more access than the preconfigured environment allows, you can deploy a custom Windows container instead. Azure App Service caches several parent images t...
Announcing the public preview of Windows Container Support in Azure App Service
Windows Server Containers in Web App are now available in public preview! Web App for Containers is catered towards developers who want to have more control over what is installed in their containers.
Announcing Windows Community Toolkit v4.0
The Windows Community Toolkit recently reached over 1 million downloads across all nuget packages. This is a very big milestone for the community and I’m very excited to announce yet another major update to the Windows Community Toolkit, version 4.0. With the help of the Windows community, this update introduces several new additions and improvements.
Are your Windows Forms and WPF applications ready for .NET Core 3.0?
At Build 2018 we announced that we are enabling Windows desktop applications (Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Framework (WPF)) with .NET Core 3.0. You will be able to run new and existing Windows desktop applications on .NET Core and enjoy all the benefits that .NET Core has to offer, such as application-local deployment and improved performance.
Microsoft Ignite – now with more code
Microsoft Ignite is known as the place for technologists to build new skills, expand proficiencies, evaluate new tools, and network with the community. This year, we’re adding even more developer-focused content than ever before by going deep on popular and emerging developer technologies. But don’t just take my word for it, hear what Scott Hanselman has to say about this year's Ignite:
Team Foundation Server 2018 Update 3 RC is available
Today, we are announcing the release candidate of Team Foundation Server 2018 Update 3.
Announcing ML.NET 0.4
A few months ago we released ML.NET 0.1 at //Build 2018., ML.NET is a cross-platform, open source machine learning framework for .NET developers. We’ve gotten great feedback so far and would like to thank the community for your engagement as we continue to develop ML.NET together in the open.
The Developer’s Guide to Microsoft Azure eBook – August update is now available
Today, we’re pleased to introduce the new and updated Developer’s Guide to Microsoft Azure eBook. Featuring extensive updates since the last update, the new eBook is designed to help you get up to speed with Azure in the shortest time possible and includes practical real-world scenarios.
Team Foundation Server 2018 Update 3 RC is available
Today, we are announcing the release candidate of Team Foundation Server 2018 Update 3.
Learn how to orchestrate serverless functions by scraping APIs in 8 minutes
Our scenario The project I’m working on requires me to retrieve information from multiple sources like the NuGet and GitHub API. Let’s bring into focus how I’m downloading data from the GitHub API. If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably already heard me talk about it. Ever ended up on a sample that should be covering the problem you’re having, but it just doesn’t work? Then, you check the last commit date only to realize that it’s been 2 years since the last commit. The way the cloud is evolving, that sample is almost no good to you.
Handling a new era in the Japanese calendar in .NET
Typically, calendar eras represent long time periods. In the Gregorian calendar, for example, the current era spans (as of this year) 2,018 years. In the Japanese calendar, however, a new era begins with the reign of a new emperor. On April 30, 2019, Emperor Akihito is expected to abdicate, which will bring to an end the Heisei era. On the following day, when his successor becomes emperor, a new era in the Japanese calendar will begin. It is the first transition from one era to another in the history of .NET, and the first change of eras in the Japanese calendar since Emperor Akihito’s accession in January 1989. ...
Adaptive Mobile Designs with FlexLayout
Xamarin.Forms is fantastic for quickly shipping a single code base to multiple platforms and devices. As soon as you are present on all those different screens, you need to make sure your UI looks as you expect, and even adapt the layout for your specific goals. FlexLayout makes this easier than before and provides new options for you to space and distribute your UI to suit different dimensions.
Tiered Compilation Preview in .NET Core 2.1
If you are a fan of .NET performance there has been a lot great news lately such as Performance Improvements in .NET Core 2.1 and Announcing .NET Core 2.1, but we’ve got more. Tiered compilation is a significant new performance feature that we are making available as a preview for anyone to try out, starting in .NET Core 2.1. In many scenarios that we have tested, applications start faster and run faster at steady state. All it needs from you is a smidgen of curiosity, a project that runs on .NET Core 2.1, and a trivial change to your environment variables or project file to enable it. In the rest of this post we...
What’s new in Azure? Check out Azure.Source – Volume 43
Announcing public preview of Azure IoT Hub manual failover feature - IoT Hub cloud service manual failover enables customers to failover an IoT hub instance from its primary Azure region to its corresponding geo-paired region with a recovery time objective (RTO) of 10 min–2 hours. The IoT Hub service provides cross-regional automatic disaster recovery as a default mitigation for region-wide failures or extenuated outages, which has an RTO of 2 – 26 hours. If your business uptime goals are not satisfied by the RTO that the Microsoft-initiated failover provides, you should consider using manual failover to trigger ...
Publish Enterprise Apps with Visual Studio App Center and Intune
Publishing and distributing line of business apps in an enterprise can be challenging for both developers and admins. Developers often use custom build tools, manually test across multiple devices and upload apps to an internal company site. Microsoft Intune offers the company portal for simple and secure distribution of apps within an enterprise. Publishing apps to the company portal could involve custom solutions using Intune API’s or sending app packages to an IT admin within the company, who uploads the apps to the company portal via the Intune blade on the Azure portal.
Ansible 2.6: What’s new for Azure
Ansible 2.6 was recently released and I am excited to share with you what’s new for Azure in Ansible 2.6. In total, four new Azure modules were added in addition to over 17 enhancements to our existing modules. In 2.6 you now have the ability to natively manage:
3 Steps to Build Your First Intelligent App – Conference Buddy
Imagine yourself at a conference, attending a session with hundreds of other enthusiastic developers. You put away your phone to pay attention to the speaker who is talking about the latest cutting-edge technologies. As you learn about the topic, you start to gather a list of questions you would like to get the answers to right away. But the timing never seems right to ask those questions. Maybe, it’s not Q&A time yet. Maybe, you are not thrilled to speak up in front of so many fellow attendees. Or maybe, even if you raised your hand or stood in line during the Q&A period, you were not picked. As a result...
.NET Framework July 2018 Update
Update: 8/03/2018 Guidance has changed for Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2. See dotnet/announcements #74. Today, we released the July 2018 Update that fixes an issue in .NET Framework 2.0, 3.5, 3.5.1, 4.5.2, 4.6, 4.6.1, 4.6.2, 4.7, 4.7.1, 4.7.2. We recommend that you apply this update if you are experiencing the issue described in the known issues Knowledge Base article 4345913 and Advisory on July 2018 .NET Framework Updates.
How to Convince Your Management to Upgrade to Visual Studio 2017 for C# and C++ Developers
Have you tried Visual Studio 2017 at home and want to use it at work? Here are eight reasons to upgrade today that you can share with your management.
What’s new in Azure? Check out Azure.Source – Volume 42
Azure App Service now supports Java SE on Linux - Support for Java SE 8-based applications on Linux in Azure App Service is now available in public preview. Now you can build and deploy Java web apps on a highly scalable, self-patching web hosting service where bug fixes and security updates will be maintained by Microsoft. Additional performance features include scaling to support millions of users with multiple instances, applications, and regions in a dynamic scaling intelligent configuration.
Guest Post: Visual UI tests on iOS simulator using Xamarin and Appium
In this tutorial, you will learn how to integrate automated visual user interface tests into a development toolchain that includes Xcode iOS simulator using Xamarin, Appium, Applitools, and MacOS (formerly OSX).
Announcing Linux on App Service Environment General Availability
Interested in deploying your Linux or containerized web app in an Azure Virtual Network? Today, we are excited to announce the general availability of Linux on App Service Environment, which combines the features from App Service on Linux and App Service Environment. As we announced in our public preview, our Linux customers will be able to take advantage of deploying Linux and containerized apps in an App Service Environment, which is ideal for deploying applications into a VNet for secure network access or apps running at a high scale.
Announcing TypeScript 3.0
TypeScript 3.0 is here! Today marks a new milestone in the TypeScript journey, serving JavaScript users everywhere. If you’re unfamiliar with TypeScript, it’s not too late to learn about it now! TypeScript is an extension of JavaScript that aims to bring static types to modern JavaScript.
Announcing Xamarin.Android 9.0 (P) Preview
Android 9.0 (P) introduces many features such as Wi-Fi RTT(Round-Trip-Time), Display cutout support, Notification enhancements, Multi-camera support, and much more. We’re excited to announce Xamarin.Android support for Android 9.0 (P) in our latest preview release of Xamarin.Android for both Visual Studio 2017 and Visual Studio for Mac.
Current use cases for machine learning in healthcare
Machine learning (ML) is causing quite the buzz at the moment, and it’s having a huge impact on healthcare. Payers, providers, and pharmaceutical companies are all seeing applicability in their spaces and are taking advantage of ML today. This is a quick overview of key topics in ML, and how it is being used in healthcare.
Announcing F# 4.5 Preview
We’re very excited to announce that we’ll be shipping a new language version of F# soon. The version will be F# 4.5. F# 4.5 has been developed entirely via an open RFC (requests for comments) process, with significant contributions from the community, especially in feature discussions and demonstrating use cases. You can view all RFCs that correspond with this release: This post will talk a little bit about some of the features in this new language version.
Visual Studio App Center and GDPR
On the Visual Studio App Center team, our engineers are completely aligned with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which gives consumers better and more explicit control of data – especially their personal data. For those of you who are less familiar with the GDPR, it is a European regulation designed to give consumers greater control over their data. One way the regulation establishes that control is through a set of Data Subject Rights (DSRs), where the consumer is a data subject and those honoring rights are either data controllers responding directly to the data subject or data processors who su...
Blazor 0.5.0 experimental release now available
Update: We released Blazor 0.5.1 to address several customer reported issues. If you have already installed Blazor 0.5.0 please update to the 0.5.1 patch (release notes). Blazor 0.5.0 is now available! This release explores scenarios where Blazor is run in a separate process from the rendering process. Specifically, Blazor 0.5.0 enables the option to run Blazor on the server and then handle all UI interactions over a SignalR connection. This release also adds some very early support for debugging your Blazor .NET code in the browser!
Top 4 ways to optimize your Microsoft Store listing
When publishing your app to the Microsoft Store, be sure to take advantage of the many options to make your Store listing stand out. Great video, text, and images can help create customer interest and drive purchases. Remember, your Microsoft Store listing will be many customers’ first exposure to your app. It’s crucial to make a good first impression!
What’s new in VSTS Sprint 137 Update
The Sprint 137 Update of Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) has rolled out to all organizations. In this Update, both Microsoft-hosted Linux and macOS agents, as well as Azure DevOps Projects are now generally available. Watch the following video to learn about a few of the features, which also includes a demonstration of some of the improvements to Wiki.
Previewing Files Inside Your Xamarin.iOS App
If your app interacts with files, such as email attachments or photos, allowing users to preview those files without leaving your app is a great way to enhance the user’s experience. Fortunately, iOS makes adding this feature simple by providing the document interaction controller and the Quick Look preview controller. In this post, you will learn the differences between the two options and how you can implement them in your app. All the code below is available as a sample app on GitHub.
Data Breakpoints – Visual Studio 2017 15.8 Update (C++)
New to Visual Studio 2017 version 15.8, you can now set data breakpoints from within the Locals, Autos, Watch, and Quickwatch windows! To view official documentation on data breakpoints, check out this post.
Enabling administrators to revoke VSTS access tokens
As promised in the Protecting our users from the ESLint NPM package breach blog post last week, we have deployed new REST APIs to allow administrators of Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) accounts to centrally revoke Personal Access Tokens (PAT) and JSON Web Tokens (JWT) created by users in their accounts.
Catch up on Azure in one post: Azure.Source – Volume 41
Now in preview Azure Service Fabric Mesh is now in public preview - Azure Service Fabric Mesh is a fully-managed service that enables developers to deploy and operate containerized applications without having to manage VMs, storage or networking configuration, while keeping the enterprise-grade reliability, scalability, and mission-critical performance of Service Fabric. Service Fabric Mesh supports both Windows and Linux containers, so you can develop with the programming language and framework of your choice. The public preview of Service Fabric Mesh is available in three Azure regions - US West, US East, and E...
Windows UI Library Preview released!
We’re excited to announce the first preview release of the Windows UI Library! The Windows UI Library (or WinUI for short) is a new way to get and use Fluent controls and styles for building Windows 10 UWP apps: via NuGet packages.
Advisory on July 2018 .NET Framework Updates
The July 2018 Security and Quality Rollup updates for .NET Framework was released earlier this month. We have received multiple customer reports of applications that fail to start or don’t run correctly after installing the July 2018 update. These reports are specific to applications that initialize a COM component and run with restricted permissions. You can reach out to Microsoft Support to get help. We have stopped distributing the .NET Framework July 2018 updates on Windows Update and are actively working on fixing and re-shipping this month’s updates. If you installed the July 2018 update and have not yet s...
Protecting our users from the ESLint NPM package breach
On the 12th of July 2018, malicious code was detected in two popular open-source NPM packages, eslint-scope (version 3.7.2) and eslint-config-eslint (version 5.0.2). As a result, developers who downloaded and installed these packages may have had credentials stored in their .npmrc file compromised. This may include credentials required to access package feeds hosted in Visual Studio Team Services.
Announcing .NET Framework 4.8 Early Access build 3632
We released the first Early Access build for the .NET Framework 4.8 last month (June-2018) and are happy to announce the next build (3632) for your feedback. This is one of the in-development builds of the next version of the .NET Framework and includes incremental fixes from the last build (3621).
Xamarin.Forms 3.1: Improving the Little Things
Earlier this year, we surveyed Xamarin.Forms developers about the kinds of custom controls and extra platform code being written repeatedly that should be considered for support “in the box”. From these conversations, we created an initiative to deliver as many as we could in the next several releases. Just six weeks after shipping Xamarin.Forms 3.0 at Build 2018, we are excited to introduce Xamarin.Forms 3.1 with a batch of those enhancements to make your lives easier. Now you can spend more time investing in your applications! In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the highlights.
Visual Studio IntelliCode now infers coding conventions for consistent code
Following the initial announcement of Visual Studio IntelliCode at Build 2018, we’re excited to report that the Visual Studio IntelliCode Extension has been updated to enable coding convention inference for C#, to help you and your team achieve more readable and consistent code. If you’re new to the Intellicode extension, it already provides AI-assisted IntelliSense suggestions, which you can read about in the initial announcement. If you already have the extension installed, you may have automatically received this update. If not, you can get started now by downloading the extension.
Azure Service Fabric Mesh tools now available for Visual Studio 2017
Azure Service Fabric is a market-tested distributed systems platform for running scalable and reliable applications on microservices and containers. Up until now, Service Fabric required you to create and manage the clusters and their nodes using virtual machine scale sets. With today’s announcement of Azure Service Fabric Mesh, you’ll be able to use Service Fabric without managing infrastructure such as VMs, storage, or networking. Additionally, we’ve released Service Fabric Mesh tooling in Visual Studio 2017 to help you build applications.
Exploring Azure App Service – Azure Diagnostics
If you’ve followed our previous posts about using Azure App Service to host web apps in the cloud (1. Introduction to App Service, 2. Hosting web apps that use SQL) you’re already familiar with how easy it is to get an app running in the cloud; but what if the app doesn’t work correctly (it’s crashing, running too slow, etc.)? In this post we’ll explore how to use Azure’s Application Insights to have always on diagnostics that will help you find and fix these types of issues.
Supercharging the Git Commit Graph IV: Bloom Filters
We’ve been discussing the commit-graph feature in Git 2.18 and how we can use generation numbers to accelerate commit walks. One area where we can get significant speedup is when presenting output in topological order. This allows us to walk a much smaller list of commits than before. One place where this breaks down is when we apply a filter to our results.
Visual UI Testing for Android Apps with Espresso and Studio App Center
This is a guest post from Daniel Puterman, engineering lead at Applitools. Suppose you’ve built a new Android app and want to build some visual test automation scripts to ensure that it appears correctly on the devices it might run on. Not all the Android devices out there — just the top 20 for now. Suppose further that your app isn’t all that complex; just ten screens, with an average of ten visual elements each. And you won’t check every last attribute of those visual elements, just five: x, y position, height, width, and text. Simple, right? Unfortunately, no.
Catch up on Azure in one post: Azure.Source – Volume 40
Highlights New Azure innovation advances customer success for the cloud- and AI-powered future - In preparation for Microsoft Inspire in Las Vegas this week (where partners and Microsoft meet to connect, learn, and collaborate to accelerate the digital transformation and success of our customers), Jason Zander (Executive Vice President, Microsoft Azure) highlighted new offers and technologies that will help organizations navigate their own digital transformation and build the critical foundations for cloud and AI. He showcases momentum from businesses and partners who are investing in intelligent tech from the cl...
Azure DevOps Projects is now general availability (GA)
During our Connect(); 2017 event, we announced the public preview of Azure DevOps Projects to help customers start running applications on any Azure service in just three steps. Today, we’re excited to announce that Azure DevOps Projects is now generally available in the Azure Portal, making it easier for developers to deploy to the Azure cloud and create CI/CD pipelines with pre-configured resources and best practices.
.NET Framework 4.7.2 is available on Windows Update, WSUS and MU Catalog
Today, we are happy to announce the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7.2 is available on Windows Update, Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) and Microsoft Update (MU) Catalog. This release includes quality and reliability updates based on early feedback on .NET Framework 4.7.2.
Getting started with Windows IoT & Azure [Video Series]
In the first episode of this series, Dmitry and his guest Suz Hinton introduce Windows IoT Core as a way of building applications for IoT solutions. We cover some foundational topics such as how Windows IoT works, and what it is designed for.
Razor Improvements – Feedback Wanted
In recent releases of Visual Studio 2017, there has been a great focus on improving the experience of working with Razor files (*.cshtml). The improvements were aimed at addressing the most pressing customer-facing issues and included changes from formatting and IntelliSense to general performance and reliability. Now that the fixes and enhancements have been publicly available for a few months, we hope you’ve been having a much-improved experience with the Razor editor. Please let us know how we’re doing by taking a short, two-minute survey. Also, feel free to leave relevant feedback in the comments section bel...
.NET Core July 2018 Update
Today, we are releasing the .NET Core July 2018 Update. This update includes .NET Core 1.0.12, .NET Core 1.1.9, .NET Core 2.0.9 and .NET Core 2.1.2.
General availability of user behavior analytics tools in Azure Application Insights
At Microsoft Build 2017, we introduced a set of user behavior analytics tools for Application Insights as a preview. Since then, we’ve listened to your feedback, adding additional capabilities and squashing bugs. We’ve also used these user behavior analytics tools on themselves, finding opportunities to improve your experience without you even having to ask! With this additional polish, today we’re graduating these tools out of preview to general availability. You can expect these tools – Users, Sessions, Events, User Flows, Funnels, Retention, Cohorts, and Impact – to be stable, well-supported parts of Applicat...
Announcing ML.NET 0.3
Two months ago, at //Build 2018, we released ML.NET 0.1, a cross-platform, open source machine learning framework for .NET developers. We’ve gotten great feedback so far and would like to thank the community for your engagement as we continue to develop ML.NET together in the open. We are happy to announce the latest version: ML.NET 0.3. This release supports exporting models to the ONNX format, enables creating new types of models with Factorization Machines, LightGBM, Ensembles, and LightLDA, and addressing a variety of issues and feedback we received from the community.
Supercharging the Git Commit Graph III: Generations and Graph Algorithms
Earlier, we announced that Git 2.18 contains a new commit-graph feature, and we discussed the commit-graph file format. As shipped in Git 2.18, this file only speeds up commit walks by a constant multiple, due to parsing structured data from the commit-graph file. Today, we continue by talking about how we can use the idea of a generation number to greatly reduce the number of commits we walk, giving much greater performance improvements. Many of the topics we discuss today are already on their way to a future version of Git while others are still part of the future plans for the commit-graph feature.
Azure.Source – Volume 39
Azure Event Hubs and Service Bus VNET Service Endpoints in public preview - Azure Event Hubs and Service Bus joins the growing list of Azure services enabled for Virtual Network Service Endpoints. Virtual Network (VNet) service endpoints extend your virtual network private address space and the identity of your VNet to the Azure services, over a direct connection. Endpoints allow you to secure your critical Azure service resources to only your virtual networks. Traffic from your VNet to the Azure service always remains on the Microsoft Azure backbone network.
System.IO.Pipelines: High performance IO in .NET
System.IO.Pipelines is a new library that is designed to make it easier to do high performance IO in .NET. It’s a library targeting .NET Standard that works on all .NET implementations. Pipelines was born from the work the .NET Core team did to make Kestrel one of the fastest web servers in the industry. What started as an implementation detail inside of Kestrel progressed into a re-usable API that shipped in 2.1 as a first class BCL API (System.IO.Pipelines) available for all .NET developers.
Introducing Dev Spaces for AKS
Today I’m excited to announce the public preview of Dev Spaces for Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS), an easy way to build and debug applications for Kubernetes – only available on Azure. At Microsoft Build, Scott Hanselman showed how you could use Dev Spaces to quickly debug and fix a single application inside a complex microservices environment. In case you missed the event or were distracted by the on-stage theatrics, it’s worth reviewing why Dev Spaces is such a unique product.
The Xamarin Show: Exploring Awesome Xamarin & Visual Studio Features
Each week on The Xamarin Show we explore the latest and greatest in Xamarin development by looking at new features built into Visual Studio, build native cross-platform user interfaces with Xamarin.Forms, and access to native APIs with Xamarin.Essentials. I am also joined by Xamarin experts that show off the awesome beautiful libraries and applications they are building with Xamarin. No matter what type of development you are into there is surely something for you over on The Xamarin Show. This week, I wanted to feature a few “Snack Pack” episodes that show off an awesome feature in under 10 minutes!
Supercharging the Git Commit Graph II: File Format
Earlier, we announced the commit-graph feature in Git 2.18 and talked about some of its performance benefits. Today, we’ll discuss some if the technical details about how the commit-graph feature works, including some helpful properties of its file format. This file speeds up commit-graph walks so much that we were able to identify other ways to speed up these walks using small optimizations.
Mobilizing Existing .NET LOB Apps [Video]
Using the Retry pattern to make your .NET Azure cloud application more resilient
This post was authored by Jason Haley, Microsoft Azure MVP. Recently, I was at Boston Code Camp catching up with some old friends and looking to learn about containers or anything that could help me in my current project of migrating a microservices application to run in containers. I was speaking with one friend who had just presented a session on Polly, and he made a comment that got my attention. He said that one of the attendees at his session was under the impression that using the cloud would make his application inherently resilient and he would not need any of the features that Polly provides.
Announcing C++ Just My Code Stepping in Visual Studio
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 that has a user callback, the debugger will conveniently step into the predicate or callback you provided rather than the library code that will eventually call your code.
App Center: Announcing Auto-Provisioning: Build and Distribute Apps Faster
Getting your app onto your own device, or in the hands of potential testers, can be one of the most time-consuming challenges when developing an iOS app. To install an app on a single device, you must register the device with Apple and sign the app with the relevant provisioning profile. While this isn’t much of an issue for a single device, you need to register and re-sign the app each time you install the app on a new set of devices. For a developer, this repetitive action is a huge loss of time; for a tester, it’s a disruptive experience to receive an app and not be able to install it because your device hasn’...
VSTS UX Improvements: New Work Hubs
In our recent post “New navigation for Visual Studio Team Services” we shared an early look at our plans for the upcoming year. For the Work hubs in VSTS, we’re investing in ways that address usability issues many of you have shared with us. In this post, we’ll describe a few of the first steps in that journey.
Changes to script debugging in Visual Studio 15.7
We’re always looking for ways to make developing with Visual Studio faster. One of the tasks developers do many times a day is launching debugging sessions. We identified that script debugging added about 1.5s per F5, but only about 15.5% of people actively debugged script using Visual Studio.
CMake Support in Visual Studio – Configuration Templates
Visual Studio 2017 15.8 Preview 3 is now available and it includes several improvements to the CMake tools. In addition to a few fixes we have simplified the way you can configure your CMakeSettings.json file by adding configuration templates. If you are new to CMake in Visual Studio, check out how to get started.
Azure.Source – Volume 38
Announcements at GeekWire Cloud Tech Summit Microsoft from GeekWire Cloud Tech Summit: New Azure innovations will advance the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge - Mark Russinovich CTO, Microsoft Azure, covers announcements he made at the GeekWire Cloud Tech Summit. He also discussed how customers are using the cloud and what the future holds with GeekWire’s Todd Bishop and Tom Krazit. This post provides a roll-up of the announcements made at the summit, which are covered in more details in the posts below.
Supercharging the Git Commit Graph
Have you ever run and waited a few seconds before the window appears? Have you struggled to visualize your commit history into a sane order of contributions instead of a stream of parallel work? Have you ever run a force-push and waited seconds for Git to give any output? You may be having performance issues due to the number of commits in your repository.
What’s new in VSTS Sprint 135 Update
The Sprint 135 Update of Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) has rolled out to all accounts. In this Update release progress gets a lot more visual. With the new release progress views, artifacts, environments, and deployment progress are now presented in a much more rich and graphical way so that you can spot problems or take action to keep releases moving. Watch the following video to learn about a few of the features, which also includes a demonstration of the new views.
More Cross-Platform APIs with Xamarin.Essentials Latest Preview
We announced Xamarin.Essentials, a core set of cross-platform APIs to help developers build native apps, at Microsoft Build 2018. Xamarin.Essentials gives developers access to over thirty platform-specific APIs that can be accessed from their shared code, including geolocation, secure storage, sensors, device information, and many more. Best of all, Xamarin.Essentials can be used in any iOS, Android, UWP, or Xamarin.Forms app, regardless of how you create the user interface. Feedback on the first preview from developers has been fantastic, with praise of a simple and straightforward way to access these native fea...
Microsoft from GeekWire Cloud Tech Summit: New Azure innovations will advance the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge
At Microsoft, we’re continually releasing technology that’s inspired by our customers and what you tell us you need to make the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge a reality for your businesses. For example, you may need to build applications to work in remote areas with low connectivity. Or you need to store, access, and drive insights from your data faster because of competitive pressures. And, you need confidence that your data and applications will be secure, resilient, and highly available across the globe.
Announcing Template IntelliSense (C++)
C++ developers using function templates and class templates can now take full advantage of IntelliSense within their template bodies. In Visual Studio 2017 15.8 Preview 3, when your caret is inside a template, a new UI element called a “Template Bar” appears next to the template definition. The Template Bar allows you to provide sample template arguments for IntelliSense.
New, experimental code analysis features in Visual Studio 2017 15.8 Preview 3 (C++)
The Visual C++ team has been working to refresh our code analysis experience inside Visual Studio. We’re aiming to make these tools both more useful and natural to use and hope that they’ll benefit you no matter your workflow, style, or project type.
Visual Studio 2017 version 15.8 Preview 3
We’re happy to share the highlights of the latest Visual Studio 2017 preview, which is now available for download.
Azure.Source – Volume 37
Microsoft deepens its commitment to Apache Hadoop and open source analytics - Last week, Hortonworks hosted the DataWorks Summit in San Jose, California, which is billed as the world’s premier big data community event for everything data. This post provides a rollup of Azure HDInsight info and reflects on the progress made since the start of Microsoft's partnership with Hortonworks and contributions made to Apache projects, such as Hadoop, Kafka, and Spark. More details are also available in the four posts listed below.
The June release of SQL Operations Studio is now available
We are excited to announce the June release of SQL Operations Studio is now available. Download SQL Operations Studio and review the Release Notes to get started.
Supercharging the Git Commit Graph (VSTS)
Have you ever run and waited a few seconds before the window appears? Have you struggled to visualize your commit history into a sane order of contributions instead of a stream of parallel work? Have you ever run a force-push and waited seconds for Git to give any output? You may be having performance issues due to the number of commits in your repository.
.NET Core 2.1 June Update
Quality updates to CLI, CoreCLR, CoreFX and WCF
.NET Core 2.0 will reach End of Life on September 1, 2018
.NET Core 2.0 was released on August 14, 2017. As a non-LTS release, it is supported for 3 months after the next release. .NET Core 2.1 was released on May 30th, 2018.
The RyuJIT transition is complete! (.NET)
RyuJIT is the code name for the .NET just-in-time compiler, one of the foundational components of the .NET runtime. In contrast, the Roslyn C# compiler compiles C# code to IL byte code. The RyuJIT compiler compiles IL byte code to machine code for multiple processors. With the recent merge of the dotnet/coreclr #18064 pull request, the remaining legacy code generation components (from older JIT implementations) have been removed from the RyuJIT source code. This PR removed almost 50k lines of code! All four of the processor architectures targeted by RyuJIT (x86, x64, ARM32, ARM64) are now built purely on the Ryu...
AI Lab: Learn to Code with the Cutting-Edge Microsoft AI Platform
Among our exciting announcements at //Build, one of the things I was thrilled to launch is the AI Lab – a collection of AI projects designed to help developers explore, experience, learn about and code with the latest Microsoft AI Platform technologies. What is AI Lab? AI Lab helps our large fast-growing community of developers get started on AI. It currently houses five projects that showcase the latest in custom vision, attnGAN (more below), Visual Studio tools for AI, Cognitive Search, machine reading comprehension and more. Each lab gives you access to the experimentation playground, source code on GitHub, ...
Staying up-to-date with .NET Container Images
This post describes the container images that we produce and update for you, that you can use with Docker, Kubernetes and other systems. When you are using .NET and Docker together, you are probably using the official .NET container images from Microsoft. We’ve made many improvements over the last year to the .NET images that make it easier for you to containerize .NET applications. Last week during DockerCon 2018, I posted an update about Using .NET and Docker Together. It demonstrates how you can use Docker with .NET, for production, development and testing. Those scenarios are all based on the .NET container ...
New Navigation for Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS)
I’m excited to share the new navigation we’re working on for Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) to modernize the user experience and give you more flexibility. As Lori mentioned in her blog post, our goal to create an integrated suite that also gives the flexibly to pick and choose the services that work best for you. That goal is a common customer request and at the heart of this new design. In the next few weeks, you’ll see a “New Navigation Preview” message pop up in your VSTS account.
Container Tooling for Service Fabric in Visual Studio 2017
The latest version of the Service Fabric tools, which is part of Visual Studio 2017 Update 7 (15.7), includes the new container tooling for Service Fabric feature. This new feature makes debugging and deploying existing applications, in containers, on Service Fabric easier than ever before. You can now take an existing console or ASP.NET application, deploy it to a container image, and run and debug it in Service Fabric as a container on your local developer workstation. With a few clicks, you can make your existing .NET application run in a container in a Service Fabric environment. Simply right-click on your p...
Azure.Source – Volume 36
Azure Blob Storage lifecycle management in public preview - Both Blob-Level Tiering and Archive Storage help you optimize storage performance and cost. Blob-Level Tiering enables you to transition blobs between the Hot, Cool, and Archive tiers without moving data between accounts. In response to customer feedback, you can now automate blob tiering and retention with lifecycle management policies. Azure Blob Storage lifecycle management offers a rich, rule-based policy which you can use to transition your data to the best access tier and to expire data at the end of its lifecycle.
Getting Started with Microsoft’s Python Developer Tools
Microsoft’s teams have been working over the last few years to bring Python developer tools to the Azure cloud and our most popular developer tools: Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio. Python is one of the fastest growing languages, with both beginner and expert developers taking to it. What makes it attractive is its easy-to-learn semantics with powerful capabilities for a wide variety of applications from writing scripts, to building web services, to building machine learning models. In this post we’ll take a tour of Python Developer tools in Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, Azure, and more. For more inform...
Queries Hub Updates Generally Available
The New Queries Hub streamlines many of the existing features from the old hub and provides new capabilities to make it easier to get to the queries that are important to you. It is now generally available for VSTS customers and coming to TFS in the next major version.
Windows Template Studio 2.2 released!
We’re extremely excited to announce the Windows Template Studio 2.2! For the next few releases, we are doing smaller updates to add in new pages and fixes. The reason being is we are working toward multi-project solution support for 3.0 and adjusting our templates to support that. This is a large sum of work but want to be sure we are still improving where we can now. As always, we love how the community is helping. If you’re interested, please head over to head over to WTS’s Github.
Using .NET and Docker Together – DockerCon 2018 Update
I posted about Using .NET and Docker Together last year. With DockerCon 2018 being this week, it seemed like a great time to give you an update. Since my last post, we’ve enabled a set of Docker workflows with guidance and samples for .NET Core and .NET Framework, for development, CI/CD, and production. We also offer many more images for both Windows and Linux. If you haven’t taken a look at Docker and .NET recently, now is a good time.
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) GA – New regions, more features, increased productivity
They say time flies when you're having fun, and as I approach two years working on containers in Azure, I see the truth in that saying. Over the last two years we have launched a Kubernetes service in Azure, acquired Deis, joined the Linux foundation, launched the Draft and Brigade open source projects, launched the first serverless container infrastructure in the major public clouds, and most recently acquired GitHub where Kubernetes was born. We've also seen incredible growth in Kubernetes on Azure, with five times the number of customers and ten times the usage of a year ago. To say that the excitement never e...
Windows 10 SDK Preview Build 17686 available now!
Today, we released a new Windows 10 Preview Build of the SDK to be used in conjunction with Windows 10 Insider Preview (Build 17686 or greater). The Preview SDK Build 17686 contains bug fixes and under development changes to the API surface area. The Preview SDK can be downloaded from developer section on Windows Insider. For feedback and updates to the known issues, please see the developer forum. For new developer feature requests, head over to our Windows Platform UserVoice.
SmartHotel360 Microservices on Azure Kubernetes Service
During the Build 2018 keynote, Scott Hanselman, with help from Scott Guthrie, showed developers the new features available in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Azure Dev Spaces. To help you learn how to deploy microservices written in any framework to AKS we've updated the SmartHotel360 back-end microservices source code and deployment process to optimize it for AKS. You can clone, fork, or download the AKS and Azure Dev Spaces demo on GitHub. Azure Kubernetes Service gives developers the best experience for building microservices in any platform including Java, .NET Core, or Node.js, to name a few used in this...
What’s new in VSTS Sprint 134 Update
The Sprint 134 Update of Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) has rolled out to all accounts. In this Update we continue to increase the breadth of services offered in Azure DevOps Projects to enable you to get started quickly. The (newly renamed) Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), a fully managed Kubernetes container orchestration service, Azure Service Fabric, and Azure SQL Database join the list of Azure services in DevOps Projects, which gives you options depending on the type of application you’re building and how much customization you want to have. Hear from Gopi, our lead for Release Management, about the valu...
VSTS and GitHub
Today, Satya announced the exciting news – our intent to acquire GitHub! GitHub and Microsoft have been partnering on several levels for years. Specifically, the VSTS team has worked closely with GitHub on Git at a technical level and on other open source projects such as libgit2, GVFS, and Git LFS. It’s been a great partnership, one where we both contribute to the overall Git community and ensure our mutual customers have a great experience when using our combined products. I’m excited about the opportunity to work even more closely with GitHub.
Announcing .NET Framework 4.8 Early Access build 3621!
Today, we are happy to share the .NET Framework 4.8 Early Access build 3621 for your feedback. This is one of the in-development builds of the next version of the .NET Framework. The changes in this build have been functionally validated by the .NET teams. We would love your help to ensure this is a high quality and compatible release. This build is not supported for production use. Next steps: •Download build 3621 •Provide your feedback by reporting an issue at the .NET Framework Early Access GitHub repository. This pre-release build 3621 includes improvements in several areas. This includes accessibility impr...
Preview of Visual Studio Kubernetes Tools
Kubernetes is an open source system that is quickly emerging as the preferred container orchestration system for applications of all shapes and sizes, simplifying the deployment, scaling, and operations of application containers. It runs in a variety of environments, including on premises as well as in cloud providers, such as Microsoft’s own Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Here on the Visual Studio team, we are working on ways to better support developers who are building containerized applications that target Kubernetes. In talking to these developers, we’ve heard that it can be challenging to create Dockerfil...
Azure.Source – Volume 35
Featuring Infrastructure-as-a-Service on Azure Why you should bet on Azure for your infrastructure needs, today and in the future - We are committed to providing the right infrastructure for every workload. Across our 50 Azure regions, you can pick from a broad array of virtual machines with varying CPU, GPU, Memory and disk configurations for your application needs. In this post on the Azure blog, Corey Sanders, Corporate Vice President, Azure, shares a few key reasons you should bet on Azure for your infrastructure needs and announces some new capabilities. In addition, these blog posts expand on items covered...
Blazor 0.4.0 experimental release now available
Blazor 0.4.0 is now available! This release includes important bug fixes and several new feature enhancements. New features in Blazor 0.4.0 (details below): Add event payloads for common event types Use camelCase for JSON handling Automatic import of core Blazor namespaces in Razor Send and receive binary HTTP content using HttpClient Templates run on IIS Express by default with autobuild enabled Bind to numeric types JavaScript interop improvements A full list of the changes in this release can be found in the Blazor 0.4.0 release notes.
What’s Next for Visual Studio
Since we launched Visual Studio 2017 in March of that year, it has become our most popular Visual Studio release ever. Your feedback has helped our team publish seven updates since our initial GA, which have improved solution load performance, build performance, and unit test discovery performance. We’ve also made Visual Studio 2017 our most accessible releases ever, helping developers with low-vision or no-vision be more productive. Our team is focused on introducing features that make every developer more productive: better navigation features like “go to all” (Ctrl + ,), features to improve code quality like ...
Azure Storage Explorer Generally Available
We are pleased to announce the general availability of Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer. Storage Explorer provides easy management of Azure Storage accounts and contents, including Blobs, Files, Queues, and Table entities. For example, you can easily manage your Azure Virtual Machines disks as Blobs. Azure Cosmos DB and Azure Data Lake are also supported as preview features.
Announcing the DevOps Resource Center
One of the favorite parts of my job is curating a web site with the stories of how we work. Those experience reports and more of our guidance are now consolidated at https://aka.ms/devops. In addition to our own stories, this center offers content to help your team learn DevOps practices, Git (including Git at scale), and Agile. There’s also a self-assessment if you’d like specific recommendations on how to improve.
How to Develop a Currency Detection Model using Azure Machine Learning (Machine Learning)
How does one teach a machine to see? Seeing AI is an exciting Microsoft research project that harnesses the power of Artificial Intelligence to open the visual world and describe nearby people, objects, text, colors and more using spoken audio. Designed for the blind and low vision community, it helps users understand more about their environment, including who and what is around them. Today, our iOS app has empowered users to complete over 5 million tasks unassisted, including many “first in a lifetime” experiences for the blind community, such as taking and posting photos of their friends on Facebook, independ...
How Azure SQL Database makes database management easier?
Azure SQL database is a platform as a service SQL Server Database Engine hosted in Azure cloud and managed by Azure. Azure automates many management activities and enables you to focus on development and optimizations. In addition, it enables you to easily configure some advanced management configurations. There are some critical database management activities that you need to do in order to ensure that your database is running without any issues: 1.Backups 2.High-availability configuration 3.Performance optimization 4.Security 5.Monitoring Azure SQL database has many of these activities built-in and automated....
The 3 improvements to Dev Center you should know about (Windows Dev Blog)
We’ve been working hard on Windows Dev Center and wanted to share some of the improvements we’ve made for you, our developers. You can now submit PWAs to the Microsoft Store First, we’re excited to announce that you can submit your Progressive Web App (PWA) to the Microsoft Store through Windows Dev Center. PWAs are web apps, progressively enhanced with modern web technologies to provide a more app-like experience. Publishing a PWA to the Microsoft Store give you full access to everything Windows Dev Center has to offer including control over how your app appears in the Microsoft Store, the ability to view and ...
Cosmos DB Solves Common Data Challenges in App Development
When considering how to implement your application with a relational database, it can change how you build it dramatically. Some of these challenges include adding an abstract implementation of the schema in the code, mapping data to objects, building queries, and preventing SQL injection attacks. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to reduce the number of problems that can arise with data when building your app? Cosmos DB could be the answer for you. Azure Cosmos DB is a fully managed, globally distributed database service that alleviates the common application development stressors of working with data. Co...
Mobilizing Existing .NET Apps (WPF, WCF, etc.)
Since the first release of the .NET Framework in 2002, developers have been building large-scale apps with client-server architectures. These apps frequently adopt a layered approach, with business logic to solve diverse and complex problems, accessed via desktop or web front-ends. Today, C# and .NET are available across a diverse set of platforms in addition to Windows, including Android and iOS with Xamarin, but also wearables like Apple Watch and Android Wear, consumer electronics via Samsung Tizen, and even HoloLens. In this blog post, I’ll show how to port business logic from WPF and build a phone- and tab...
Azure SQL Database – scalability
Azure SQL Database is a flexible Platform as a service database that can be easily scaled to fit your needs. You can add more compute or storage to satisfy your performance requirements without waiting for new hardware or migrating data to more powerful machines. Azure enables you to change performance characteristics of your database on the fly and assign more resources when needed or release the resources when they are not needed in order to decrease the cost.
Library Manager: Client-side content manager for web apps in Visual Studio
If you’re developing a modern web app, chances are your app will reference client-side JavaScript and CSS files like jQuery or bootstrap. Maybe you copy these from a previous project, download them, or use Bower. However, with Bower announcing they won’t be offering support into the future, we thought it time to produce a lightweight, effective solution for web developers to easily manage common client-side library files. So, we are previewing a new tool: Library Manager – Available in Visual Studio 2017 v15.7 Preview 4.0 in the Web Development and .NET Core workloads. Library Manager (“LibMan” for short) is Vi...
Azure.Source – Volume 33
Microsoft continues to be a leader in Gartner's Cloud IaaS MQ - For the fifth consecutive year, Microsoft is recognized as a leader in Gartner's IaaS Magic Quadrent. Check out this post for the details and a link to not only this report, but a long list of other Gartner MQs that place Microsoft in the leader's quadrant. Now in preview Create enterprise subscription experience in Azure portal public preview - Learn about the public preview of a fully-integrated create subscription experience in the Azure portal for Azure Enterprise Agreement (EA) subscriptions. Previously, EA subscriptions were created in a sepa...
Using TensorFlow and Azure to Add Image Classification to Your Android Apps (Xamarin Blog)
TensorFlow is a well established, open source machine learning and deep learning framework that can be used to create and run a wide range of different models, usually using powerful machines in the cloud. In addition, TensorFlow also supports running models on mobile devices through the TensorFlow.Mobile library, taking advantage of the hardware acceleration available on modern phones to run models incredibly fast on low powered mobile devices. In this post, we’ll discuss how to build an image classifier to identify different fruits using the Azure Custom Vision service, and create a simple Android app to use t...
Performance Improvements in .NET Core 2.1
Back before .NET Core 2.0 shipped, I wrote a post highlighting various performance improvements in .NET Core 2.0 when compared with .NET Core 1.1 and the .NET Framework. As .NET Core 2.1 is in its final stages of being released, I thought it would be a good time to have some fun and take a tour through some of the myriad of performance improvements that have found their way into this release. Performance improvements show up in .NET Core 2.1 in a variety of ways. One of the big focuses of the release has been on the new System.Span type that, along with its friends like System.Memory, are now at the heart of the...
Release Flow: How We Do Branching on the VSTS Team
Whenever I talk to somebody about Git and version control, one question always comes up: How do you do your branching at Microsoft? And there’s no one answer to this question. Although we’ve been moving everybody in the company into one engineering system, standardizing on Git hosted in Visual Studio Team Services, what we haven’t done is move everybody into the same branching and development model. Some teams — like Windows — have kept a branching strategy that is similar to the one that they’ve been using for many years. It’s hard to argue with this approach, they’ve got a lot of tooling to support it, and t...
OAuth 2.0 for Mixed Reality applications
We recently collaborated with Aveva, an industrial design and management software company. The goal for Aveva was to improve its remote rendering service and extend this technology to support an ever-growing list of platforms and devices including HoloLens. As a result of our collaboration, we built 3DToolkit, a toolkit for creating powerful cloud-based 3D experiences that can stream to any device. One of the key decisions we had to make was how to secure these 3D experiences. After investigating different techniques, we chose the OAuth 2.0 industry-standard protocol to authenticate our users. This protocol is w...
New Xamarin.Android and Xamarin.iOS Project Templates Now Available
Whether you’re new or a seasoned Xamarin developer, project templates are an important part of the app building journey. They should be easy to find and set you up for success from the start. As such, we’ve updated our Xamarin.Forms project templates in Visual Studio 2017 version 15.5 to include .NET Standard support and customization options, including the ability to choose which platforms to target. We’re continuing to improve the template experience in Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7 with updates to the Android and iOS project templates. In this post, we’ll cover the changes we’ve made to make discovery easi...
Blazor 0.2.0 release now available – new experimental web UI framework
Just a few weeks ago we announced the first preview release of an experimental web UI framework called Blazor. Blazor enables full-stack web development using C# and WebAssembly. So far thousands of web developers have taken on the challenge to try out Blazor and done some pretty remarkable things: •Started using Blazor to build RealWorld web apps •Used Blazor to control a Christmas tree from a Raspberry Pi •Built a Blazor app for looking up lyrics to vocaloid music •Integrated Blazor with the Redux DevTools to do time-traveling debugging The feedback and support from the community has been tremendous. Thank you...
Visual Studio 2017 roadmap now available
With the release of Visual Studio 2017, we moved to a release schedule that delivers new features and fixes to you faster. With this faster iteration, we heard you would like more visibility into what’s coming. So, we’ve now published the Visual Studio Roadmap. The roadmap lists some of the more notable upcoming features and improvements but is not a complete list of all that is coming to Visual Studio. When you look at the roadmap, you’ll see that we grouped items by quarter. Since every quarter includes several minor and servicing releases, the actual delivery of a feature could happen any time during the quar...
Azure SQL Database – the database engine that cannot die
Azure SQL Database is highly available database Platform as a Service that guarantees that your database will be up and running 99.99% of time, without worrying about maintenance and downtimes. This is a fully managed SQL Server Database Engine process hosted in Azure cloud that ensures that your SQL Server database is always upgraded/patched without affecting workload. Azure SQL Database could quickly recover even in the most critical circumstances ensuring that your data is always available. Azure platform fully manages every Azure SQL Database and guarantees no data loss and high percentage of data availabili...
Implement Drawer and Split UI with the Xamarin.Forms MasterDetailPage (Xamarin Blog)
Drawer navigation and master-detail UI are two powerful patterns that guide users through content in applications with significant amounts of data or many pages. Xamarin.Forms provides the MasterDetailPage to help you implement both presentation styles. Using MasterDetailPage in Xamarin.Forms MasterDetailPage does a lot of the work for you if you know how to specify a split view vs. a drawer. You also need to be aware of the situations where Xamarin.Forms will override your selection. Once you know how it works, MasterDetailPage is a great tool to help you create responsive applications that run on a wide selec...
App Center: API-First CI/CD for iOS and Android App Development
It’s common for developers to use Visual Studio App Center alongside all the tools they love and rely on, and respecting those preferences and investments is central to the way we design and think about App Center. We hope to put the power to extend and flex your workflow back in your hands by exposing as much as possible through our public API. In pursuit of this mission, we've chosen to release multiple open source contributions, so you get the most out of App Center as we continue to build new and exciting features.
Aiming to fill skill gaps in AI, Microsoft makes training courses available to the public
As a software engineer at Microsoft, Elena Voyloshnikova’s job is to make informed recommendations about how to improve the performance of software engineering tools. But too often, she spends her days manually analyzing the data she needs to make those decisions. Lately, her team has been discussing the potential of building machine learning models to automate that task – creating more time to focus on the decision-making. That’s why she was intrigued when she received an email announcing an upcoming AI training session for Microsoft employees. “I asked my manager, ‘Can I go to this?’” she said. “I thought it...
Power BI and VSTS – Integration made easy
We are excited to announce an easy-to-use solution for integrating Power BI with VSTS Analytics. You don’t have to know how to write OData queries anymore! Our new feature Analytics views makes getting VSTS work tracking data into Power BI simple, and it works for the largest accounts. Similar to a work items query, an Analytics View specifies filters that scope the result of work items data and the columns. Additionally, views allow you to report on past revisions of work items and easily create trend reports.
How Windows, Windows Store, Xbox & Surface moved their 350gig source repo into Git hosted on VSTS (Video)
Voronoi Selection for Cancer Drug Network Visualization in Mixed Reality
Researchers at the Englander Institute for Precision Medicine (EIPM) at Weill Cornell Medicine bring together basic science, medicine, DNA sequencing and big data to deliver the next generation of precision medicine; it is the most promising approach to tackle diseases like cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, and rare genetic conditions that have thus far eluded effective treatments. Their multidisciplinary team consists of physician-scientists, researchers, and bioinformaticians who are working together to identify the genetic alterations that drive the diseases and to form tailored, targeted treatments for ever...
Explore CosmosDB with .NET Core and MongoDB
Have you had to design general purpose “metadata” tables in your SQL database that basically store column names and values? Do you often serialize/de-serialize XML or JSON from your SQL tables to handle volatile schemas and data? .NET developers have traditionally worked with relational database management systems (RDMS) like SQL Server. RDMS systems have withstood the test of time and are production-ready. Like many tools, however, RDMS systems aren’t always the best solution. You may benefit from a different approach called NoSQL. Contrary to popular belief, NoSQL doesn’t mean “NO SQL” but rather “Not Only SQL....
A Brief History of .NET Standard
Xamarin (and before that, Mono) allowed .NET code to run on multiple platforms for years. These days, there’s a new push in cross-platform with .NET Core and .NET Standard. This post looks at the history of code sharing in .NET and where cross-platform .NET is going with Core and Standard. History of .NET Standard In the early days of the .NET framework, there was little need to share code between applications. When Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) was released in 2006, it was a choice between WinForms or WPF, and developers didn’t have to support the same application in both frameworks. Though sharing fil...
Configuring C++ IntelliSense and Browsing
Whether you are creating a new (or modifying an existing) C++ project using a Wizard, or importing an project into Visual Studio from another IDE, it’s important to configure the project correctly for the IntelliSense and Browsing features to provide accurate information. This article provides some tips on configuring the projects and describes a few ways that you can investigate configuration problems. Include Paths and Preprocessor Macros The two settings that have the greatest effect on the accuracy of IntelliSense and Browsing operations are the Include Paths and the Preprocessor macros. This is especiall...
Playing in the Sandbox: How We Created Minecraft’s Multi-Platform Design
This is special guest post from Mark Grinols, a development lead on the Minecraft team at Microsoft. A key aspect of Minecraft that players love is the ability to play with family and friends on nearly any platform they choose. Offering this breadth of choice to hundreds of millions of players worldwide is a substantial engineering challenge. In addition to the original version in Java on Windows and macOS, we’ve added cross-platform functionality with the C++ codebase using the Bedrock Engine, which runs on multiple form factors and OSes, including mobile (iOS, Android and Windows Mobile), consoles (Xbox and...
IntelliSense for Remote Linux Headers
In Visual Studio 2017 15.7 Preview 3 we are introducing IntelliSense for headers on remote Linux connections. This is part of the Linux development with C++ workload that you can choose in the Visual Studio installer. If you are just getting started with the C++ Linux support in Visual Studio you can read our C++ Linux tutorial at aka.ms/vslinux. When you add a new connection in the Connection Manager we will automatically determine the include directories for the compiler on the system. Those directories will be zipped up and copied to a directory on your local Windows machine. Then, when you use that connectio...
Announcing Babylon.js v3.2
Babylon.js is an open source framework designed from ground up to help create easy and powerful 3D experiences in your browser or your web apps. Today I’m excited to announce the availability of Babylon v3.2. As usual, our wonderful community helped build a massive list of features and fixes for this release. I highly encourage you to read through it as it is full of cool demos that highlight new capabilities available for you right out of the box. I would also like to take some time here to detail some of the new features that best characterize this release.
Get the Azure Quick Start Guide for .NET Developers
This blog post was co-authored by Barry Luijbregts, Azure MVP. If you’re a .NET developer, we’re excited to introduce a new resource that can help you learn about Azure: The Azure Quick Start Guide for .NET Developers! This guide shows .NET developers how they can start with Azure and get the most out of it. The e-book is also great for .NET developers who already use Azure and want to learn more about which Azure services are available to them, and the tools they can use to develop applications for the platform.
MSVC now correctly reports __cplusplus
The MSVC compiler’s definition of the __cplusplus predefined macro leaps ahead 20 years in Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7 Preview 3. This macro has stubbornly remained at the value “199711L”, indicating (erroneously!) that the compiler conformed to the C++98 Standard. Now that our conformance catch-up work is drawing to a close we’re updating the __cplusplus macro to reflect the true state of our implementation. The value of the __cplusplus macro doesn’t imply that we no longer have any conformance bugs. It’s just that the new value is much more accurate than always reporting “199711L”.
C++ code analysis: configure rules from the command line
Visual Studio version 15.7 Preview 3 introduces a new MSVC compiler switch, /analyze:ruleset, that configures code analysis runs. The primary motivation for this switch is to enable developers who are using C++ Code Analysis without using MSBuild to filter rules. But developers who are using code analysis with MSBuild also benefit from this switch: code analysis runs are faster, increasing your compilation throughput. Prior to Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7 Preview 3, all rules are run every time you run C++ code analysis. When you run code analysis for a given project, checkers like C++ Core Check generate a l...
Azure.Source – Volume 31
Last week, thousands of developers gathered in Seattle for Microsoft Build 2018, Microsoft’s annual developer conference, to learn how we are empowering them to advance the future of society with AI and the intelligent edge. This week's Azure.Source covers a lot of content. For a more concise (TL;DR) summary of Build 2018, check out the Microsoft press release, Microsoft Build highlights new opportunity for developers, at the edge and in the cloud. For a roll-up of all the Azure announcements, see: Azure Announcements from Microsoft Build. And if you want to dig into all of the content delivered at Build 2018 ses...
Side-by-side minor version MSVC toolsets in Visual Studio 2017
We’ve been delivering improvements to Visual Studio 2017 more frequently than ever before. Since its first release in March we’ve released four major updates to VS2017 and are currently previewing the fifth update, VS2017 version 15.5. The MSVC toolset in VS2017 is built as a minor version update to the VS2015 compiler toolset. This minor version bump indicates that the VS2017 MSVC toolset is binary compatible with the VS2015 MSVC toolset, enabling an easier upgrade for VS2015 users. Even though the MSVC compiler toolset in VS2017 delivers many new features and conformance improvements it is a minor version, com...
Publish Improvements in Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7 Preview 4
Today we released Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7. Our 15.7 update brings some exciting updates for publishing applications from Visual Studio that we’re excited to tell you about, including: •Ability to configure publish settings before you publish or create a publish profile •Publish to a fully managed App Service Linux environment •Create Azure Storage Accounts and automatically store the connection string for App Service •Automatic enablement of Managed Service Identity in App Service Configure settings before publishing When publishing your ASP.NET Core applications to either a folder or Azure App Service ...
.NET Highlights in Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7 Preview 4
As you know we continue to incrementally improve Visual Studio 2017 (version 15), and our 7th significant update is currently well under way with the 4th preview shipping today. As we’re winding down the preview, we’d like to stop and take the time to tell you about all of the great updates that are coming in Visual Studio version 15.7 for .NET projects and ask you to try it and give us any feedback you might have while we still have time to correct things before we ship the final version. From a .NET tools perspective, Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7 brings a lot of great enhancements including: •Support for .N...
What’s new in Microsoft’s Cloud-hosted DevOps Service: VSTS – Sprint 133 Update
The Sprint 133 Update of Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) has rolled out to all accounts. In this Update we continue to expand on the languages and platforms we support build and release. Check out the demo video for an overview of the features and a look at YAML and the release definition templates. YAML builds, which has been in preview for the last several months, allows you to version your build definition alongside your code… because it is part of your code. Now you can also maintain the specific branches for triggering continuous integration (CI) builds right from within the YAML build definition file. T...
CMake Support in Visual Studio – Targets View, Single File Compilation, and Cache Generation Settings
Visual Studio 2017 15.7 Preview 3 is now available, which includes several improvements to the CMake tools. The latest preview offers more control than ever over how to visualize, build, and manage your CMake projects. Please download the preview and check out the latest CMake features such as the Targets View, single file compilation, and more control over when projects are configured. As always, we would love to hear your feedback too. If you are new to CMake in Visual Studio, check out how to get started.
Build 2018 DevOps Recap – VSTS, App Center, App Insights & More
DevOps is about people, process and products. Getting it all right requires effort but the benefits to your organization and customers can be huge. Microsoft has a fantastic set of products that can adapt to any language on any platform. In this demo heavy session, starting from just a blank desktop, we will create a new DevOps project and a complete pipeline. We will show you how to deploy to a number of different Azure services, all live and hands on. It’s never been easier to containerize your services using Docker and deploy them to Azure using Kubernetes. In this session we will introduce you to the world o...
Visual Studio for Mac version 7.5 and beyond
Last year at Build, we launched Visual Studio for Mac, our native macOS IDE for developers building cloud, web, and mobile applications using .NET. Updates have been rolling out at a steady pace ever since, and we’re excited to announce the release of Visual Studio for Mac version 7.5. We have also continued to bring more Visual Studio 2017 code to the Mac. Our mission has always been to delight developers, and we have something for everyone in this release. You can get started by downloading the new release or updating your existing install to the latest build in the Stable channel. Here are some of the featu...
Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7 and version 15.8 Preview 1
Today at Build, we announced the release of Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7 and the first preview of the next update, Visual Studio 2017 version 15.8 Preview 1. If you would rather try these without installing them, check out the Visual Studio images in Azure that will be available soon. Before digging in, I’d like to call out other Visual Studio and .NET news: •We have a generally available release of Visual Studio 2017 for Mac version 7.5, our IDE for cloud, mobile, and game development on macOS. •We have a release candidate for .NET Core 2.1, our cross-platform, open source .NET implementation. •We published ...
Announcing Entity Framework Core 2.1 RC 1
Today, we are excited to announce that the first release candidate of EF Core 2.1 is available, alongside .NET Core 2.1 RC 1 and ASP.NET Core 2.1 RC 1, for broad testing, and now also for production use! EF Core 2.1 RC1 is a “go live” release, which means once you test that your application works correctly with RC1, you can use it in production and obtain support from Microsoft, but you should still update to the final stable release once it’s available. Go live support for EF Core RC1 extends to the base functionality in EF Core and to the providers that are developed as part of the Entity Framework Core proje...
Try the Latest Release of Xamarin.Forms 3.0!
We are overjoyed to bring you our latest stable release of Xamarin.Forms, version 3.0. This is our fastest, richest release to date coupled with fantastic improvements up and down the Xamarin stack such as the latest XAML IntelliSense experience in Visual Studio 2017. When you upgrade to 3.0 you’ll discover new layout and styling power that will improve how you build your UI including Visual State Manager, Flex Layout, Style Sheets, and Right-to-Left support just to name a few. In addition to micro-optimizations, XAML compilation has also received specific attention to show build times reduced by as much as 88% ...
Start developing on Windows 10 April 2018 Update today
We’re excited to announce that the Windows 10 April 2018 Update (build 17134.1) and SDK is now available. You may also know this as Windows 10, version 1803. A few new features and APIs sure to become your favorites Every major Windows 10 update always includes a wide range of APIs. These will surely be among your favorites. 1.Windows Machine Learning (WinML): WinML allows you to run ML ONNX models on any Windows 10 device on the April 2018 Update or greater. By just dragging your model into VS, loading the model, then executing it based on inputs, you can add machine learning into your application. If your mod...
Scott Guthrie: New Azure innovations are helping developers write code today for tomorrow’s technology challenges
This morning, at the Microsoft Build conference in Seattle, I talked about the key areas of new Azure innovation that enable the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge – spanning developer tools, DevOps, containers, serverless, Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI). Innovation starts with developers writing code. The effectiveness of your dev tools are at the heart of your ideas becoming reality. With this in mind, we continue to deliver new innovation and experiences with Visual Studio tools. Whether it is Visual Studio, VS Code or Visual Studio Team Services for DevOps, we are committed to ...
.NET Core 3 and Support for Windows Desktop Applications
At Microsoft Build Live today, we are sharing a first look at our plans for .NET Core 3. The highlight of .NET Core 3 is support for Windows desktop applications, specifically Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Framework (WPF), and UWP XAML. You will be able to run new and existing Windows desktop applications on .NET Core and enjoy all the benefits that .NET Core has to offer. We are planning on releasing a first preview of .NET Core 3 later this year and the final version in 2019. We will be looking for developers to partner with us, to give us feedback, and to release versions of your applications in the sam...
Announcing .NET Core 2.1 RC 1
Today, we’re announcing .NET Core 2.1 Release Candidate 1 (RC 1). The .NET Core 2.1 RC 1 is now ready for broad testing and for production use. Our quality, reliability, and performance testing give us confidence that the release is ready for the first set of production users. On the metrics that we can measure, .NET Core 2.1 is a large step forward from .NET Core 2.0. ASP.NET Core 2.1 RC 1 and Entity Framework 2.1 RC 1 are also releasing today. You can download and get started with .NET Core 2.1 RC 1, on Windows, macOS, and Linux: •.NET Core 2.1 RC 1 SDK (includes the runtime) •.NET Core 2.1 RC 1 Runtime You ...
Microsoft Build 2018: New releases for Visual Studio, Visual Studio for Mac, .NET Core and Xamarin.Forms
Microsoft Build has always been a time when we deliver a wealth of developer-focused announcements. It’s an opportunity to share our vision for developer experiences across mobile, AR/VR, cloud, web, desktop, IoT and AI. This year, I’m excited to have brought this vision to life with more than a few exciting announcements: 1..NET Core 2.1 RC 2.Future of Windows Desktop Development 3.Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7 4.Visual Studio for Mac version 7.5 5.Xamarin Forms 3.0 General Availability 6.Visual Studio Live Share Public Preview 7.Introducing Visual Studio IntelliCode For an overview of announcements across th...
Microsoft and GitHub Present: A Solution for Mobile CI
Microsoft and GitHub are continuing to empower developers with great tools so they can ship high-quality apps faster and with greater confidence. The new Visual Studio App Center app in the GitHub Marketplace provides mobile developers with a powerful Continuous Integration (CI) experience tailored for GitHub users. With a CI solution at their fingertips, iOS, Android, Xamarin, and React Native developers with code on GitHub can automate their Build-Test-Distribute process for their apps.
Join Microsoft Build Live for the ultimate digital experience
Registration is now open for the Microsoft Build Live digital experience, May 7–9! Microsoft Build Live brings you live as well as on-demand access to three days of inspiring speakers, spirited discussions, and virtual networking. Whether you can’t make it to Seattle or just want to enhance your on-the-ground experience at Microsoft Build, the livestream gives you another way to connect, spark ideas, and deepen your engagement with the latest ideas in the cloud, AI, mixed reality, and more. Register for free and start designing your own personalized digital experience: Learn: There’s a lot going on at Microsof...
Azure Container Instances now generally available
I am proud to announce the general availability of Azure Container Instances (ACI) – a serverless way to run both Linux and Windows containers. ACI offers you an on-demand compute service delivering rapid deployment of containers with no VM management and automatic, elastic scale. When we released the preview last summer of ACI, it was the first-of-its-kind and fundamentally changed the landscape of container technology. It was the first service to deliver innovative serverless containers in the public cloud. As part of today’s announcement, I am also excited to announce new lower pricing, making it even less exp...
Announcing the .NET Framework 4.7.2
Today, we are happy to announce the release of the .NET Framework 4.7.2. It’s included in the Windows 10 April 2018 Update. .NET Framework 4.7.2 is also available on Windows 7+ and Windows Server 2008 R2+. You can download the .NET Framework 4.7.2 •Web Installer •Offline Installer The .NET Framework 4.7.2 includes improvements in several areas: •[ASP.NET] Support for SameSite cookie in ASP.NET •[ASP.NET] Support for ASP.NET Dependency Injection •[ClickOnce] Per-monitor support for WPF and HDPI-aware VSTO apps deployed via ClickOnce •[SQL] Always Encrypted enhancements in SQL Connectivity •[Networking & BC...
Azure.Source – Volume 29
Microsoft Build 2018 is only a short week away on May 7-9. Whether you can’t make it to Seattle or you just want to enhance your on-the-ground experience at the event, Microsoft Build Live brings you live as well as on-demand access to three days of inspiring speakers, spirited discussions, and virtual networking. The livestream gives you another way to connect, spark ideas, and deepen your engagement with the latest ideas in the cloud, AI, mixed reality, and more.
Windows Template Studio 2.0 is now available!
Windows Template Studio has released our 2.0 release and can’t wait for everyone to create some amazing applications with it. Template Studio is an open source project whose sole goal is to get you building applications quicker with best practices with a solid initial code base. We’re extremely proud of our community driven project and the massive contributions / partnerships we’ve had with you over the past year since we launched. How to get the update: There are two paths to update to the newest build. •Already installed: Visual Studio should auto update the extension. To force an update, Go to Tools->Ext...
Microsoft Pre-Build update: Developer innovation with Windows Server 2019 and Azure
Enterprises are adopting digital transformation to engage end users, offer competitive products, empower their employees, and improve operations. To drive this transformation, developers need a modern platform that helps them deliver innovation at the rate of changing business demands. With Windows Server 2016 we started on a journey to deliver a truly modern platform that is developer inspired and focused on delivering cross-platform and open source technologies, while maintaining Windows Server’s high reliability standards. After Windows Server versions 1709 and 1803, Windows Server 2019 marks the next milesto...
Load solutions faster with Visual Studio 2017 version 15.6
As we have been working to improve the solution load experience in Visual Studio 2017, you may have read our blog about these improvements in version 15.5. With version 15.6, we have introduced parallel project load, which loads large .NET solutions twice as fast as earlier versions when you reload the same solution. During the first load of a solution, Visual Studio calculates all the IntelliSense data from scratch. In the previous version of Visual Studio 2017, version 15.5, we optimized the calculation of IntelliSense data by parallelizing the design-time build that produces the data. Solutions that were ope...
What’s new in VSTS Sprint 132 Update
The Sprint 132 Update of Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) has rolled out to all accounts and includes several features to help you scale your build and release pipeline. If you have multiple, dependent teams in your organization working on large products, check out the new build completion trigger. It allows you to chain two related builds together so that changes to an upstream component, such as a library, can trigger a rebuild of a downstream dependency.
How Windows, Windows Store, Xbox & Surface streamlined their planning and centralized on VSTS (Video)
Spectre mitigation changes in Visual Studio 2017 Version 15.7 Preview 3
With Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7 Preview 3 we have two new features to announce with regards to our Spectre mitigations. First, the /Qspectre switch is now supported regardless of the selected optimization level. Second, we have provided Spectre-mitigated implementations of the Microsoft Visual C++ libraries. Complete details are available in context in the original MSVC Spectre mitigation post on VCBlog. Changes in Update 3 are also listed below. In previous versions of MSVC we only added Spectre mitigations when code is being optimized. In Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7 Preview 3 we’ve added support for ...
Intelligent Edge: Building a Skin Cancer Prediction App with Azure Machine Learning, CoreML & Xamarin
AI has emerged as one of the most disruptive forces behind digital transformation and it is revolutionizing the way we live and work. AI-powered experiences are augmenting human capabilities and transforming how we live, work, and play – and they have enormous potential in allowing us to lead healthier lives as well. AI is empowering clinicians with deep insights that are helping them make better decisions, and the potential to save lives and money is tremendous. At Microsoft, the Health NExT project is looking at innovative approaches to fuse research, AI and industry expertise to enable a new wave of healthcar...
New Microsoft Azure regions available for Australia and New Zealand
Two new Microsoft Azure regions in Australia are available to customers, making Microsoft the only global provider to deliver cloud services specifically designed to address the requirements of the Australian and New Zealand governments and critical national infrastructure, including banks, utilities, transport and telecommunications. We build our cloud infrastructure to serve the needs of our customers by delivering innovation globally and listening locally. To support the mission-critical work of crucial organizations in Australia and New Zealand, we’re delivering our global cloud platform through a unique par...
Azure.Source – Volume 28
Last week, we made several Azure Security announcements in conjunction with RSA Conference 2018 in San Francisco: •Introducing Microsoft Azure Sphere: Secure and power the intelligent edge - Microsoft Azure Sphere is a new solution for creating highly-secured, Internet-connected microcontroller (MCU) devices. Azure Sphere includes three components that work together to protect and power devices at the intelligent edge: Azure Sphere certified microcontrollers (MCUs), Azure Sphere OS, and Azure Sphere Security Service.
Essential tools and services for building mobile apps
This blog post was co-authored by Rajen Kishna, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Azure Marketing – App Development. Azure, Visual Studio, Xamarin, and Visual Studio App Center give you the flexible, yet robust tools and services to build, test, deploy, and continuously improve Android and iOS apps that your users will love. Use your favorite language and tools, to tap into robust cloud services, and quickly scale to millions of users on demand. Azure provides many services to help you build cloud-connected mobile apps, including Mobile Backend as a Service, Data, and Artificial Intelligence (outlined below), a...
New Xamarin.Forms XAML IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2017
Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7 previews are now available, featuring significant improvements to the XAML experience for mobile developers. The Xamarin.Forms XAML editing experience is now powered by the same IntelliSense engine that powers WPF and UWP. This brings several enhancements to developers, including improved matching, binding/commanding IntelliSense, light bulb suggestions, code navigation, linting, resource completion, and markup extension completion. In this post, we’ll take a look at some of the improvements to the XAML IntelliSense experience.
vcpkg is now cross platform and support Linux MacOS and Windows
At Microsoft, the core of our vision is “Any Developer, Any App, Any Platform” and we are committed to bringing you the most productive development tools and services to build your apps across all platforms. With this in mind, we are thrilled to announce today the availability of vcpkg on Linux and MacOS. This gives you immediate access to the vcpkg catalog of C++ libraries on two new platforms, with the same simple steps you are familiar with on Windows and UWP today. Vcpkg has come a long way since its launch at CppCon 2016. Starting from only 20 libraries, we have seen an incredible growth in the last 19 mont...
Xamarin Joins docs.microsoft.com
Today we’re beginning a new chapter in mobile developer documentation: Xamarin docs are now live on docs.microsoft.com/xamarin! Here are a few highlights of the new documentation experience: Xamarin Docs Hub All our documentation options are a click or two away from docs.microsoft.com/xamarin. Click Xamarin in the header to return there from any page. Use the platform links to see our mobile developer docs, and switch to the Graphics & Games or Tools tabs to learn more about related topics such as SkiaSharp, Workbooks, and the Xamarin Live Player.
App Center Errors: Monitoring and Keeping Your Xamarin Apps Healthy
Building and shipping a successful app is a challenge. Monitoring and keeping your app healthy is even more challenging and time-consuming. Once you ship your app into the wild, unexpected errors often occur as real users start engaging with it; staying on top of them is crucial to the success of your app and business. As a developer, you need to have insight into the cause of these issues and how frequently they're happening. Visual Studio App Center recently shipped a feature that gives you just that awareness. We're excited to announce the release of the Errors feature for iOS and Android apps built using Xam...
Visual Studio Build Tools now include the VS2017 and VS2015 MSVC Toolsets (C++ Team Blog)
The Visual C++ Build tools have been a huge success since we introduced them two years ago. The C++ Build Tools were originally released as a standalone installer that only laid down the tools required to build C++ projects without installing the Visual Studio IDE. Many developers have found them useful in environments that don’t require a full VS install such as build servers or CI systems. The tools are always kept up-to-date, shipping only the latest supported version of the MSVC compiler toolset. With Visual Studio 2017’s new, flexible installer we were able to move away from our custom C++ Build Tools setup...
What’s New for Xamarin Developers in Visual Studio 2017 Version 15.7 Preview 3
Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7 Preview 3 was released today (April 9, 2018) and includes many improvements for mobile developers in Visual Studio. This release sports a brand new IntelliSense experience for Xamarin.Forms, automatic iOS provisioning, a new feature for installing Android SDKs on-demand, brand new iOS and Android project templates, and more! The release is available as a preview, which, like all Visual Studio previews, is a separate and sandboxed installation from your stable one. This makes it safe to try without risking your production development environment. In this post, we’ll take a look at ...
Announcing CodeLens for C++ Unit Testing
C++ developers in Visual Studio can now get their first taste of CodeLens! Specifically, Visual Studio 2017 15.7 Preview 3 Professional and Enterprise editions offer CodeLens for Unit Testing. There are a few ways to initialize CodeLens: •Edit and Build your test project/solution •Rebuild your project/solution •Run test(s) from the Test Explorer Window After performing any of the above actions, CodeLens will appear above each of your unit tests. CodeLens allows you to Run, Debug, and view the Test Status of your unit tests directly in the source file. The test status indicators are the same as the ones in the T...
Announcing .NET Core 2.1 Preview 2
Today, we are announcing .NET Core 2.1 Preview 2. The release is now ready for broad testing, as we get closer to a final build within the next two to three months. We’d appreciate any feedback that you have. ASP.NET Core 2.1 Preview 2 and Entity Framework 2.1 Preview 2 are also releasing today. You can download and get started with .NET Core 2.1 Preview 2, on Windows, macOS, and Linux: •.NET Core 2.1 Preview 2 SDK (includes the runtime) •.NET Core 2.1 Preview 2 Runtime You can see complete details of the release in the .NET Core 2.1 Preview 2 release notes. Known issues and workarounds are included in the rel...
Create Service Fabric Clusters from Visual Studio now available
We heard feedback that the current processes for creating secure clusters were complex and time-consuming. Based on your input, we've added the ability to create secure clusters directly from Visual Studio. This update shipped with the latest release of the Service Fabric tooling for Visual Studio 2015 and with Visual Studio 2017 as part of the Azure workload. One of the main features of the latest release is the experience in Visual Studio for creating a cluster from the "Publish" dialog. This feature will allow you to modify the settings for the cluster, create required supporting resources, and generate the s...
Private audience: A new way to test your apps and games in production (Windows)
One of the consistent themes that the Dev Center Team hears from the Windows developer community is that first impressions are important. Before launching a new app or game, it’s important to validate that the experience is working perfectly in production. At the same time, many developers may have disclosure concerns and want to control the announcement timing of new products. We’ve heard your feedback that testing in production before launch is critical to gain confidence in your products’ quality, and that you’d like to be able to do this testing without having the product visible to anyone beyond the intended...
Sequence Intent Classification Using Hierarchical Attention Networks
In this code story, we will discuss applications of Hierarchical Attention Neural Networks for sequence classification. In particular, we will use our work the domain of malware detection and classification as a sample application. Malware, or malicious software, refers to harmful computer programs such as viruses, ransomware, spyware, adware, and others that are usually unintentionally installed and executed. When detecting malware in a running process, a typical sequence to analyze could be a set of disk access actions that the program has taken. To analyze software without running it, we can treat series of as...
Get Community driven Docker images for Web app for Containers
You can now find community driven docker images to try out on Web App for Containers on Github. These images follow best practices for Web app for containers , contain SSH for debugging purposes. How to deploy: These docker images can be found on Docker hub on hub.docker.com/r/appsvcorg. Use the latest tag for the most recent version of the image when deploying it to Web app on Azure.
Top stories from the VSTS community – 2018.04.13
Here are top stories we found in our streams this week related to DevOps, VSTS, TFS and other interesting topics, listed in no specific order: TOP STORIES •Is there a place for DevOps in desktop software development? Andrei Marukovich raises the question whether the DevOps principles, widely accepted by cloud and Web projects, may benefit desktop software developers as well. •Migrating Team Foundation Server to Visual Studio Team Services using Database Import Service – TFS Migrator Mohamed Radwan shares personal experiences of the Migration Team Foundation Server to Visual Studio Team Services using Database ...
Soft delete for Azure Storage Blobs now in public preview
Today we are excited to announce the public preview of soft delete for Azure Storage Blobs! The feature is available in all regions, both public and private. When turned on, soft delete enables you to save and recover your data where blobs or blob snapshots are deleted. This protection extends to blob data that is erased as the result of an overwrite. How does it work? When data is deleted, it transitions to a soft deleted state instead of being permanently erased. When soft delete is on and you overwrite data, a soft deleted snapshot is generated to save the state of the overwritten data. Soft deleted objects...
Announcing the Availability of Azure Functions in National Clouds
To further our commitment of providing the latest in cloud innovation for each and every one of our customers, we’re excited to announce the availability of Azure Functions in three separate national clouds – China, Germany and United States Government. National or sovereign clouds are physically and logically network-isolated instances of Microsoft’s cloud service, which are confined within the geographic boundaries of specific countries and operated by local personnel. These clouds offer a unique model for local regulations on service delivery, data residency, access and control. Functions in the national c...
Deploying WordPress Application using Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) and Azure – Part two
This post is the second part of two blog posts describing how to setup a CI/CD pipeline using Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) for deploying a Dockerized custom WordPress website working with Azure WebApp for Containers and Azure Database for MySQL. In Deploying WordPress application using Visual Studio Team Services and Azure - part 1 we described how to build a Continuous Integration (CI) process using VSTS, while in this part we are going to focus on the Continuous Delivery (CD) part by using the VSTS Release management.
The March 2018 release of SQL Operations Studio is now available
We are excited to announce the March release of SQL Operations Studio is now available. Download SQL Operations Studio and review the Release Notes to get started. SQL Operations Studio is a data management tool that enables you to work with SQL Server, Azure SQL DB and SQL DW from Windows, macOS and Linux. To learn more, visit our Github.
Adding support for Debug Adapters to Visual Studio IDE
Since its release, Visual Studio Code’s extension model, based on well-known web technologies such as TypeScript and JSON, has attracted a great deal of participation from the community, with hundreds of extensions published to provide support for exciting new languages and technologies. Visual Studio 2017 took the first steps towards participating in this ecosystem in November, with the release of the Language Server Protocol preview. Now, in Visual Studio 2017 version 15.6, we’re excited to announce support for another Visual Studio Code extension component – the debug adapter. If you’ve previously written a de...
What’s new in VSTS Sprint 131 Update
The Sprint 131 Update of Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) has rolled out to all accounts and includes several features that were prioritized and influenced by feedback over the last several months. The Work Items hub, which is now generally available, brings important work together into a new hub with several views for items you’re following, your activity, and, of course, items assigned to you. I showed this new hub to another team in Microsoft yesterday and they were eager to start using it since it enables them to drop some of the queries they often run.
Explore CosmosDB with .NET Core and MongoDB
Have you had to design general purpose “metadata” tables in your SQL database that basically store column names and values? Do you often serialize/de-serialize XML or JSON from your SQL tables to handle volatile schemas and data? .NET developers have traditionally worked with relational database management systems (RDMS) like SQL Server. RDMS systems have withstood the test of time and are production-ready. Like many tools, however, RDMS systems aren’t always the best solution. You may benefit from a different approach called NoSQL. Contrary to popular belief, NoSQL doesn’t mean “NO SQL” but rather “Not Only SQL....
SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 17.6 is now available: Managed Instance and many bug fixes
Download SSMS 17.6 and review the Release Notes to get started. SSMS 17.6 provides support for almost all feature areas on SQL Server 2008 through the latest SQL Server 2017, which is now generally available. In addition to enhancements and bug fixes, SSMS 17.6 comes with several exciting new features: •Added more support for Azure SQL Database Managed Instance. •Fixed a key performance issue in SMO where scripting tables on SQL Server 2016 took 30 seconds, but now take less than one second. •Object Explorer: Added settings to allow users not to force brackets around names when dragging and dropping from Object...
Announcement: Publish markdown files from your git repository to VSTS Wiki
This feature will be available in VSTS after the deployment of the Sprint 132 update is completed. Now you can publish markdown files from a git repository to the VSTS Wiki. Developers often write SDK documents, product documentation, or README files explaining a product in a git repository. Such pages are often updated alongside code in the code repository. Git provides a friction free experience where code and docs can live on the same branch and are reviewed together in pull requests and are released together using the same build and release process.
Training State-of-the-Art Neural Networks in the Microsoft Azure Cloud
This is the third post in a three-part series by guest blogger, Adrian Rosebrock. Adrian writes at PyImageSearch.com about computer vision and deep learning using Python. He recently finished authoring a new book on deep learning for computer vision and image recognition. Introduction In the final part in this series, I want to address a question I received from Mason, a PyImageSearch reader, soon after I published the first post in the series: Adrian, I noticed that you said tested all of the code for your new deep learning book on the Microsoft Data Science Virtual Machine (DSVM). Does that include the chapt...
ASP.NET Core manageability and Application Insights improvements
There are many great investments on the ASP.NET Core 2.1 roadmap. These investments make ASP.NET Core applications easier to write, host, test, and make security and standards compliant. This blog post talks about areas of investments in manageability and monitoring space. It covers ASP.NET Core, .NET, and Application Insights SDK for ASP.NET Core features and spans beyond 2.1 milestone. The main themes of manageability improvements across the application stack are: 1.Distributed tracing 2.Cross platform features parity 3.Runtime awareness 4.Ease of enablement 5.App framework self-reporting Let’s dig into the i...
Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7 Preview 3 now available
Today we released the third preview of the next update: Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7. The top highlights of this Preview include: •Updates to Universal Windows Platform development •C++ development improvements •Significant updates in Xamarin and .NET Mobile Development •Ability to configure installation locations •Debugger support for authenticated Source Link •Live Unit Testing improvements •New tooling for migrating to NuGet PackageReference •Connected Service improvements to deployment and Key Vault functionality This preview builds upon the features that debuted in the Preview 2 and Preview 1 releases t...
Calling all Desktop Developers: how should UI development be improved?
The user interface (UI) of any application is critical in making your app convenient and efficient for the folks using it. When developing applications for Enterprise use, a good UI can shave time off an entire company’s workflow. Visual Studio is investing in new tools to improve the productivity of Windows desktop developers and we’d love your help to make sure the improvements we make are the right ones. Please fill out our Desktop Developer Survey. It takes 1-2 mins to fill out. It will give us a sense of the kind of applications you build. We will be reaching out to people that respond so that you can help ...
VSTS Deployment Groups is now generally available: sharing of targets and more
We are excited to announce that Deployment Groups is out of preview and is now generally available. Deployment Groups is a robust out-of-the-box multi-machine deployment feature of Release Management in VSTS/TFS. What are Deployment Groups? With Deployment Groups, you can orchestrate deployments across multiple servers and perform rolling updates, while ensuring high availability of your application throughout. You can also deploy to servers on-premises or virtual machines on Azure or any cloud, plus have end-to-end traceability of deployed artifact versions down to the server level.
Virtual Machine Serial Console access (Azure)
Ever since I started working on the Virtual Machine (VM) platform in Azure, there has been one feature request that I consistently hear customers asking for us to build. I don’t think words can describe how excited I am to announce that today we are launching the public preview of Serial Console access for both Linux and Windows VMs. Managing and running virtual machines can be hard. We offer extensive tools to help you manage and secure your VMs, including patching management, configuration management, agent-based scripting, automation, SSH/RDP connectivity, and support for DevOps tooling like Ansible, Chef, an...
Azure.Source – Volume 25 (What’s New in Azure)
One of the biggest news items out of last week was the arrival of Virtual Machine Serial Console access in public preview in all global regions. This is something customers have wanted for some time and the team was ecstatic to finally deliver it. Down below, you'll find a blog post and episodes of Tuesdays with Corey and Azure Friday that go into all the details and show how it works.
#GlobalAzure Bootcamp 2018
The Global Azure Bootcamp (#GlobalAzure) is a worldwide series of one-day technical learning events for Azure. It is created and hosted by leaders from the global cloud developer community. This is community, pure and simple, at its very best. And you can join too! If you’d like to host a Global Azure Bootcamp, all you need to do is sign up and create an event for your location, which will put your pin on our map of locations. Making your event happen is easy, follow these guidelines for more information. All you need is a location (a conference room will often suffice!), some local experts to speak and tutor a ...
Training Many Anomaly Detection Models using Azure Batch AI
In the IoT world, it’s not uncommon that you’d want to monitor thousands of devices across different sites to ensure normal behavior. Devices can be as small as microcontrollers or as big as aircraft engines and might have sensors attached to them to collect various types of measurements that are of interest. These measurements often carry signals that indicate whether the devices are functioning as expected or not. Sensor data can be used to train predictive models that serve as alarm systems or device monitors that warn when a malfunction or failure is imminent.
Gaming with Windows Machine Learning (ML)
Earlier this month, Microsoft announced the availability of Windows Machine Learning. We mentioned the wide-ranging applications of WinML on areas as diverse as security, productivity, and the internet of things. We even showed how WinML can be used to help cameras detect faulty chips during hardware production. But what does WinML mean for gamers? Gaming has always utilized and pushed adoption of bleeding edge technologies to create more beautiful and magical worlds. With innovations like WinML, which extensively use the GPU, it only makes sense to leverage that technology for gaming. We are ready to use this n...
Configuring C++ IntelliSense and Browsing
Whether you are creating a new (or modifying an existing) C++ project using a Wizard, or importing an project into Visual Studio from another IDE, it’s important to configure the project correctly for the IntelliSense and Browsing features to provide accurate information. This article provides some tips on configuring the projects and describes a few ways that you can investigate configuration problems. Include Paths and Preprocessor Macros The two settings that have the greatest effect on the accuracy of IntelliSense and Browsing operations are the Include Paths and the Preprocessor macros. This is especiall...
Azure Monitor–General availability of multi-dimensional metrics APIs
In September of last year we announced the public preview of multi-dimensional metrics in Azure Monitor, Microsoft’s built-in platform monitoring service for Azure. Today we are pleased to announce the general availability of the APIs that support this capability. Now you can explore your Azure metrics through their dimensions and unlock deeper insights. Dimensions are name value pairs, or attributes, that can be used to further segment a metric. These additional attributes can help make exploring a metric more meaningful. Azure Monitor has also increased our metric retention period from 30 days to 93 days, so yo...
C++ Core Checks in Visual Studio 2017 15.7 Preview 2
The C++ Core Guidelines Check extension received several new rules in Visual Studio 2017 15.7 Preview 2. The primary focus in this iteration was on the checks that would make it easier to adopt utilities from the Guidelines Support Library. Below is a quick summary of these additions. For more detailed information please see documentation on MSDN: C++ Core Guidelines Checker Reference. If you’re just getting started with native code analysis tools, take a look at our introductory Quick Start: Code Analysis for C/C++.
Get started building .NET web apps that run in the browser with Blazor
Today we released our first public preview of Blazor, a new experimental .NET web framework using C#/Razor and HTML that runs in the browser with WebAssembly. Blazor enables full stack web development with the stability, consistency, and productivity of .NET. While this release is alpha quality and should not be used in production, the code for this release was written from the ground up with an eye towards building a production quality web UI framework. In this release we've laid the ground work for the Blazor component model and added other foundational features, like routing, dependency injection, and JavaScr...
TFS 2018 Update 2 RC1 is now available for download
We have released Team Foundation Server 2018 Update 2 RC1. Update 2 is the first “feature” update for TFS 2018 based on our updated release approach. Here are some key links: TFS 2018.2 RC1 Release Notes TFS 2018.2 RC1 Web Installer TFS 2018.2 RC1 ISO TFS 2018.2 RC1 Express Web Installer TFS 2018.2 RC1 Express ISO RC1 is a go-live release that is fully supported for installation in your production environment. We’ve tested and used it in our own environment in addition to having run it on VSTS. RC1 is available in all languages, but you may notice that some strings are still in English. We expect to have all th...
Pixel-Level Land Cover Classification Using the Geo AI Data Science Virtual Machine and Batch AI
Last week Microsoft launched the Geo AI Data Science Virtual Machine (DSVM), an Azure VM type specially tailored to data scientists and analysts that manage geospatial data. To support the Geo AI DSVM launch, we are sharing sample code and methods for our joint land cover mapping project with the Chesapeake Conservancy and ESRI. We have used Microsoft’s Cognitive Toolkit (CNTK) to train a deep neural network-based semantic segmentation model that assigns land cover labels from aerial imagery. By reducing cost and speeding up land cover map construction, such models will enable finer-resolution timecourses to trac...
GVFS for Mac
Over the last couple of years, we built GVFS to enable the Windows team to work in a Git repo that is orders of magnitude larger than any repo in existence before it. GVFS is currently only supported on Windows 10. We recently announced that we’re investigating how to build GVFS on other platforms. I’m excited to say that we’ve made good progress on a prototype design for GVFS for Mac, and I’ll share some of those details here.
Introducing Windows Server 2019 – now available in preview
Today is a big day for Windows Server! On behalf of the entire Windows Server team, I am delighted to announce Windows Server 2019 will be generally available in the second half of calendar year 2018. Starting now, you can access the preview build through our Insiders program. Windows Server 2019 is built on the strong foundation of Windows Server 2016 – which continues to see great momentum in customer adoption. Windows Server 2016 is the fastest adopted version of Windows Server, ever! We’ve been busy since its launch at Ignite 2016 drawing insights from your feedback and product telemetry to make this release...
Serverless computing recipes for your cloud applications
You have heard the hype around serverless computing, read countless online articles about its benefits, and heard industry pundits find new adjectives to describe its pathbreaking nature on a frequent basis. Are you now ready to dig into what you can actually do with real code using serverless computing cloud services like Azure Functions? If so, you should download and read the free Azure Serverless Computing Cookbook that describes with rich code examples, how to solve common problems using serverless Azure Functions.
Now Available: Access to Source Code & Demos of AI-Infused Apps
The success of enterprises in adopting AI to solve real-world problems hinges on bringing a comprehensive set of AI services, tools and infrastructure to every developer, so they can deliver AI-powered apps of the future that offer unique, differentiated and personalized experiences. In this blog post, we are sharing source code and other resources that demonstrate how easy it is for existing developers without deep AI expertise to start building such personalized data-driven app experiences of the future. To start off, what are the key characteristics of such AI apps? We would expect them to be intelligent and...
Lesser known features of C# 7 (On .NET – Video)
How Three Lines of Code and Windows Machine Learning Empower .NET Developers to Run AI Locally on Windows 10 Devices
Artificial Intelligence (AI) with deep learning and machine learning algorithms are changing the way we solve variety of problems from manufacturing to biomedical industries. The applications that can benefit from the power of AI are endless. With the Windows Machine Learning (Windows ML) API, as .NET developers, we can now leverage the ONNX models that have been trained by data scientists and use them to develop intelligent applications that run AI locally. In this blog post, we will give an overview of what Windows ML can do for you; show you how to use ONNX in your UWP application; and introduce you to the W...
Visual Studio 2017 Version 15.7 Preview 2 now available
Today we released the second preview of the next update: Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7. We hope that you will use this Preview and share your feedback with us. To use the Preview, you can either install it fresh from here, you can update the bits directly from the IDE, or if you have an Azure subscription, you can provision a virtual machine with this latest preview (starting tomorrow). The top highlights of this Preview include: •Improved intellisense for conditional XAML •Additional C++ development improvements •Streamlined configuration for updating UWP apps •Inclusion of TypeScript 2.8 •Ability to debug Ja...
Visual Studio for Mac version 7.5 Preview 1 now available
Earlier this month, we released version 7.4 of Visual Studio for Mac, our IDE for developers on macOS who are building mobile, web, and cloud apps. Today, we’re announcing the first preview of Visual Studio for Mac version 7.5, which you can get by changing the updater channel in Visual Studio for Mac to use the Beta channel. In this release, the top highlights include: •Adding new editor support for Razor, JavaScript, and TypeScript. •Improving Azure Functions development with support for the .NET Core Preview SDK and with the introduction of new Azure Functions templates. •Adding support for the latest releas...
Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing!
If you just want to see what DirectX Raytracing can do for gaming, check out the videos from Epic, Futuremark and EA, SEED. To learn about the magic behind the curtain, keep reading. 3D Graphics is a Lie For the last thirty years, almost all games have used the same general technique—rasterization—to render images on screen. While the internal representation of the game world is maintained as three dimensions, rasterization ultimately operates in two dimensions (the plane of the screen), with 3D primitives mapped onto it through transformation matrices. Through approaches like z-buffering and occlusion culli...
Announcing Preview 1 of ASP.NET MVC 5.2.5, Web API 5.2.5, and Web Pages 3.2.5
Today we released Preview 1 of ASP.NET MVC 5.2.5, Web API 5.2.5, and Web Pages 3.2.5 on NuGet. This is a patch release that contains only bug fixes. You can find the full list of bug fixes for this release in the release notes. To update an existing project to use this preview release run the following commands from the NuGet Package Manager Console for each of the packages you wish to update.
Announcing TypeScript 2.8
TypeScript 2.8 is here and brings a few features that we think you’ll love unconditionally! If you’re not familiar with TypeScript, it’s a language that adds optional static types to JavaScript. Those static types help make guarantees about your code to avoid typos and other silly errors. They can also help provide nice things like code completions and easier project navigation thanks to tooling built around those types. When your code is run through the TypeScript compiler, you’re left with clean, readable, and standards-compliant JavaScript code, potentially rewritten to support much older browsers that only s...
Text Recognition for Video in Microsoft Video Indexer
While humans have cognitive abilities that allow them to complete hidden parts of the text and disambiguate local deficiencies resulting from bad video quality, direct application of OCR is not sufficient for automatic text extraction from videos. In Video Indexer, we developed and implemented a dedicated approach to tackle this challenge. In this post, we will introduce the approach and see a couple of results that demonstrate its power.
Announcing general availability of Azure database services for MySQL and PostgreSQL
Today, I am excited to announce the general availability (GA) of Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL. The GA milestone means that, starting today, these services are bringing the community versions of MySQL and PostgreSQL with built-in high availability, a 99.99% availability SLA, elastic scaling for performance, and industry leading security and compliance to Azure. Since we started the preview of MySQL and PostgreSQL on Azure in May 2017, we have accomplished a lot, increasing compute scale up to 32 vCores, offering a new Memory Optimized tier, ability to scale storage on-line independen...
The UWP Community Toolkit v2.2
I am extremely excited to announce the latest update of the UWP Community Toolkit, v2.2. The credit for this release, as always, goes to the community, who have continued to support and improve the toolkit for each release. V2.2 introduces a new Parsers package, new controls and helpers, and many improvements and bug fixes to existing APIs. Below is a quick list of the highlights of this release. Make sure to visit the release notes for the complete list of what is new in v2.2
Azure cloud data and AI services training roundup
Looking to transform your business by improving your on-premises environments? Accelerating your move to the cloud, and gaining transformative insights from your data? Here’s your opportunity to learn from the experts and ask the questions that help your organization move forward. Join us for one or all of these training sessions to take a deep dive into a variety of topics. Including products like Azure Cosmos DB, along with Microsoft innovations in artificial intelligence, advanced analytics, and big data.
Python in Visual Studio 15.7 Preview 1
Today we have released the first preview of our next update to Visual Studio 2017. You will see a notification in Visual Studio within the next few days, or you can download the new installer from visualstudio.com. In this post, we're going to look at some of the new features we have added for Python developers. As always, the preview is a way for us to get features into your hands early, so you can provide feedback and we can identify issues with a smaller audience. If you encounter any trouble, please use the Report a Problem tool to let us know. The two major new features are a preview of the ptvsd 4.0 debug...
AI Platform for Windows Developers
At Microsoft, we’re making huge investments in AI and Machine Learning across the company. AI capabilities in Office 365 help subscribers with productivity at work, intelligent features in the Photos app for Windows 10 make it easier for people to create videos and search through massive photo collections, and Windows Hello uses AI to recognize your face and get you quickly logged in to your Windows devices. We also use AI to answer your questions when using Bing Search and Cortana, to enable advertisers build deeper connections with customers, and to help security professionals safeguard businesses against moder...
Announcing TypeScript 2.8
Today we’re excited to announce and get some early feedback with TypeScript 2.8’s Release Candidate. To get started with the RC, you can access it through NuGet, or use npm with the following command: npm install -g typescript@rc TypeScript 2.8 introduces a new construct called conditional types. This new construct is based on JavaScript’s conditional syntax, and takes the form A extends B ? C : D. You should mentally read this as “if the type A is assignable to B, then the type boils down to C, and otherwise becomes D“.
How VSTS is Accelerating the Engineering Group Behind Windows
As part of our engineering processes in Microsoft, we often share best practices and stories of change across the engineering teams in the company. At our latest internal engineering conference as I listened in to sessions, I was struck by the sheer scale of the effort the Windows and Devices Group (WDG) undertook and the problems they’ve solved using Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) and wanted to write up some of my key takeaways here. WDG here at Microsoft powers the operating systems of computing devices across the planet. It looks after not only the Windows operating system, but also Xbox, Surface, HoloLen...
Microsoft Azure Service Fabric is going open source
We’re happy to announce that Service Fabric is going open source under the MIT license and over the coming months we will be transitioning to a completely open development process on GitHub. We've heard from many of you about the importance of being able to participate in the development and direction of the platform that you depend on to run your mission-critical applications. We stay active on GitHub and Stack Overflow for that reason, and open sourcing the platform is the natural evolution to make that collaboration even better. That’s why we’re committed to making Service Fabric a successful open source proj...
Open for Feedback: Contribute Directly to Visual Studio App Center Product Documentation
To ensure Visual Studio App Center is as easy as possible to use, we've created a more direct feedback channel for building and publishing product documentation based on the great feedback we receive from you, our users. Open sourcing our product documentation is a natural extension of our App Center philosophy, which is open API, open source SDKs, and an open source CLI. Our public document repository also enables us to integrate with a feedback system based on GitHub issues.
Last week in Azure #23: Week of March 12
Last week in Azure, we were at the Rice Oil and Gas HPC conference showing how high-performance computing in the cloud is helping companies in that industry get more done. This week, we'll be at GDC 2018 showing game developers how Azure can handle the management of their gaming platforms so that they can focus on what they do best: make games that make headlines. Week after week, we're demonstrating how Azure is the cloud for all.
Last Week in Azure #22: Week of March 5
Last week, it became even more evident that Azure is the best place for all of your applications and data with numerous announcements about investments that dramatically expand the choice and ROI of moving your SQL Server and open source applications to Azure. But these investments aren't just about Azure. They deliver deeper platform consistency across on-premises and cloud with a rich open source application framework and database support, and expanded cost-savings for Microsoft customers.
Microsoft reaches a historic milestone, using AI to match human performance in translating news from Chinese to English
A team of Microsoft researchers said Wednesday that they believe they have created the first machine translation system that can translate sentences of news articles from Chinese to English with the same quality and accuracy as a person. Researchers in the company’s Asia and U.S. labs said that their system achieved human parity on a commonly used test set of news stories, called newstest2017, which was developed by a group of industry and academic partners and released at a research conference called WMT17 last fall. To ensure the results were both accurate and on par with what people would have done, the team ...
F# language and tools update for Visual Studio 2017 version 15.6
With the release of Visual Studio 2017 version 15.6, we’re excited to share updates to the F# language and core library, F# tooling in Visual Studio, and infrastructure updates that concern OSS contributors. Let’s dive in! F# language and core library updates Some foundational changes for the F# language and core library have been made, in addition to smaller behavioral language changes and added features to FSharp.Core.
Visual Studio, Azure and friends at GDC 2018
Next week, the world’s largest professional game industry event kicks off in San Francisco: Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2018. We’re incredibly excited to engage with all developers at the event looking to join the growing community of more than half a million monthly active developers building great games with Visual Studio today. Microsoft experts will be at the event and are looking forward to have great conversations with you. Here’s an overview of where you can find us.
Visual Studio 2017 Version 15.7 Preview 1
Last week we released Visual Studio 2017 version 15.6 and Visual Studio for Mac version 7.4, and today we are releasing the first preview of the next minor update: Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7. We hope that you will use this Preview and share your feedback with us. To install, you can get it fresh from here or, if you already have a prior Preview installed, you can either click on the in-product notification or check for an update directly. Alternatively, if you have an Azure subscription, you can provision a virtual machine with this latest preview (starting tomorrow). The top highlights of this Preview ...
VSTS for Mobile Development (Channel 9 Video)
In this episode, Donovan is joined by James Montemagno, who shows some cool extensions for Visual Studio Team Service for mobile pipelines. Resources: Blog Post GitHub VSTS marketplace
New app usage monitoring capabilities in Application Insights
Our goal with Azure Monitoring tools is to provide full-stack monitoring for your applications. The top of this “stack” isn’t the client-side of your app, it’s your users themselves. Understanding user behavior is critical for making the right changes to your apps to drive the metrics your business cares about. Recent improvements to the usage analytics tools in Application Insights can help your team better understand overall usage, dive deep into the impact of performance on customer experience, and give more visibility into user flows.
Security updates for TFS 2015 Update 4, TFS 2017, and TFS 2017 Update 3
We released updates to Team Foundation Server 2015 Update 4, Team Foundation Server 2017, and Team Foundation Server 2017 Update 3 to fix security vulnerabilities. You can read the details in Brian’s blog post. We recommend customers install these updates. All of these fixes are also in Team Foundation Server 2018 Update 1, and we recommend customers on Team Foundation Server 2018 to upgrade to Update 1.
New Git Features in Visual Studio 2017 Update 6
This week we released Visual Studio 2017 Update 6. In this release, you can now push, delete, and view all of the Git tags in your repository. Additionally, if you use Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS), you can checkout pull request branches making it easier to review, test, and build changes. To learn more about what else is new in Visual Studio 2017 Update 6, check out the Visual Studio release notes.
Confidently plan your cloud migration: Azure Migrate is now generally available
A few months ago, we announced Azure Migrate – a new service that provides guidance and insights to help you migrate to Azure. Today, we're excited to announce that Azure Migrate is generally available. Azure Migrate is offered at no additional charge and provides appliance-based, agentless discovery of your on-premises environments. It enables discovery of VMware-virtualized Windows and Linux VMs today and will enable discovery of Hyper-V environments in the future. It also provides an optional, agent-based discovery for visualizing interdependencies between machines to identify multi-tier applications. This en...
Students: Get career-ready with Azure for Students
Today, we’re excited to announce Azure for Students. Designed uniquely with student-focused cloud usage in-mind, this offer gives verified students full access to 25+ free Azure products as well as US$100 monetary credit for use toward our paid products with no credit card requirement. If you’re seeking to grow your cloud dev skills – you’re in the right place. Get started here. Helping students build for tomorrow Azure for Students is part of our growing commitment to Education both in the cloud and in the STEM classroom. Cloud and specifically distributed computing competencies are the #1 skillset needed most ...
Announcing new milestones for Microsoft Cognitive Services vision and search services in Azure
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as one of the most disruptive forces behind the digital transformation of business. At Microsoft, we believe everyone—developers, data scientists and enterprises—should have access to the benefits of AI to augment human ingenuity in unique and differentiated ways. We’ve been conducting research in AI for more than two decades and infusing it into our products and services. Now we’re bringing it to everyone through simple, yet powerful tools. One of those tools is Microsoft Cognitive Services, a collection of cloud-hosted APIs that let developers easily add AI capabilities ...
Calling All Desktop Developers: How do you interact with data?
Connecting to databases and services is an important part of desktop application development for many of our customers. Visual Studio provides a variety of tools and technologies that can help you connect to and interact with your different data sources. We’d love your help in shaping our future offerings in this space! Please fill out the survey below so we can learn more about what you currently use, your biggest challenges, and your future plans. It should only take 5 minutes to complete!
Deploying WordPress application using VSTS and Azure – part one
This post is the first part of two blog posts, describing how to setup a CI/CD pipeline using VSTS for deploying a dockerized custom WordPress website working with Azure WebApp for Containers and Azure Database for MySQL. The Motivation The main motivation for building a WordPress CI/CD pipeline is the fact that WordPress is limited in supporting dynamic configuration to allow easy modification between different environments. Some values are hardcoded in the WordPress MySQL database. This limitation causing a time consuming task which limits our ability to deploy fast and more frequently. The Idea We will hav...
Get started with Azure Cosmos DB through this technical training series
Are you building a new application which requires low latency at any scale? Or are you in the process of migrating your NoSQL databases to the cloud? Or looking for the right resources to help you get started with Azure Cosmos DB? Join us for one or all of a seven-week Azure Cosmos DB technical training series, which explores the capabilities and potential of Azure Cosmos DB. Whether you’re brand new to Azure Cosmos DB or an experienced user, you’ll leave this series with a better understanding of database technology and have the practical skills necessary to get started. Azure Cosmos DB is the world’s first gl...
How (and Why) We Built Our New Visual Studio App Center Tester Apps: Preview Now Available!
We’re excited to announce that HockeyApp for App Center, our native iOS and Android apps, are now available! HockeyApp for App Center brings the functionality of the App Center install website to a native app experience, making it even easier for you and your beta testers to get the latest and greatest builds as soon as they’re available. We call the app "HockeyApp" because we want to welcome our HockeyApp users to using this app; all the apps you distribute through HockeyApp are also visible and downloadable with this app!
Visual Studio 2017 version 15.6, Visual Studio for Mac version 7.4 Released
Today, we released updates to both Visual Studio 2017 and Visual Studio for Mac. Start your download now while you browse the rest of this post: download Visual Studio 2017 version 15.6 or Visual Studio for Mac. We’ll trigger the update notification flag in the tools in the coming days. Visual Studio 2017 version 15.6 I’ll highlight some of the major changes in this post, but to see the complete list of changes and features, please see our Release Notes. Performance We have kept working to improve many aspects of performance and with this update, three things stand out: •This update makes solution load for ma...
Announcing Entity Framework Core 2.1 Preview 1
Today we are releasing the first preview of EF Core 2.1, alongside .NET Core 2.1 Preview 1 and ASP.NET Core 2.1 Preview 1. The new bits are available in NuGet as part of the individual packages, and as part of the ASP.NET Core meta-packages (both Microsoft.AspNetCore.All and the new Microsoft.AspNetCore.App), and included in the .NET Core SDK. The majority of the new features of EF Core 2.1 are present and ready to try in Preview 1: We want to maximize the exposure of the new features to you, our customers, and the amount of time we will have to address your feedback before the final release. We would like to e...
Announcing .NET Core 2.1 Preview 1
Today, we are announcing .NET Core 2.1 Preview 1. It is the first public release of .NET Core 2.1. We have great improvements that we want to share and that we would love to get your feedback on, either in the comments or at dotnet/core #1297. ASP.NET Core 2.1 Preview 1 and Entity Framework 2.1 Preview 1 are also releasing today. You can download and get started with .NET Core 2.1 Preview 1, on Windows, macOS, and Linux: •.NET Core 2.1 Preview 1 SDK — includes the Runtime •.NET Core 2.1 Preview 1 Runtime You can develop .NET Core 2.1 apps with Visual Studio 2017 15.6 Preview 6 or later, or Visual Studio Code. ...
Join Microsoft Azure, Visual Studio, Mixer, App Center, VSTS and others @ GDC 2018
Join us at GDC and kickstart your next big game Microsoft will host three locations at the Game Developers Conference this year, demonstrating services and tools that make your life as a developer easier and more productive. Azure provides powerful development tools, global and flexible multiplayer support, and robust analytics for game developers. And now, with the acquisition of PlayFab, Azure is increasing its investment in technology innovation.
Top stories from the VSTS community–2018.03.02
Here are top stories we found in our streams this week related to DevOps, VSTS, TFS and other interesting topics. TOP STORIES •Make a Group Team Administrator in VSTS/TFS – Jesse Houwing In the past, I’ve contributed to the TFS Team Tools from the ALM Rangers. That project had since been deprecated, though it still has a few unique features. I’ve decided to resurrect it and you can now find it on my GitHub account. While I was at it, I incorporated the functionality to list, add and remove Team Administrators. It supports adding individuals as well as groups. •Deploying WordPress application using VSTS and Azur...
Azure Blob Storage as a Network Drive
Many applications make use of a network drive to backup and store files. When I was in university I found myself constantly coding for fun, and one example took the form of a network share for my roommates to share files wrapped in a handy little app. Unfortunately, that particular app has long since been erased from whichever hard drive it was initially birthed. Fortunately, I think we can reinvent this magical piece of software (albeit to a scoped degree) with Azure Blob Storage. In the past, network drives did the trick, but Azure Storage offers users automatic backups, better flexibility and global availabil...
Using AI to automatically redact faces in videos
In the last few years, many law enforcement agencies have adopted body worn cameras. In this blog post, I will provide some background on what is driving the growth and will talk about how AI can help law enforcement agencies with the processing of videos captured by body-worn cameras. Background on body-worn cameras A body worn camera is a wearable audio, video or photographic recording system. Law enforcement agencies are not the only consumers of body-worn cameras. Other consumers include journalists, medical professionals, athletes, and so on. The forecast unit shipments of body-worn cameras can be seen on ...
New VSTS Messaging Extension for Microsoft Teams
Today we are releasing our new Messaging Extension to add to the integrations between Microsoft Teams and Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS). The messaging extension allows you to search, find, and discuss specific work items in your channel or private chats. It is great way to have a group conversation about your work, without leaving Microsoft Teams. Instructions on how to set up the Microsoft Teams integrations can be found on the Team Services marketplace. Give it a try and let us know what you think. In the meantime we will continue to invest in our collaboration efforts with Microsoft Teams. If you have id...
VSTS/TFS Roadmap update for 2018 Q1 and Q2
We recently published an update to the “Features under development” roadmap on our Features timeline. This feature list, although subject to change and not comprehensive, provides visibility into our key investments in the medium term. We update the feature list as part of our agile planning rhythms, about every 9 weeks. Some of the features link to deep dive blog posts or articles where you can find out more. We also denote the version of on-premises TFS we expect the feature to be included in, often after getting mileage on VSTS. Here are a few features that are particularly noteworthy. Code: Add required revi...
Your guide to Azure services for apps built with Xamarin
When talking about app development today, the cloud is almost always part of the conversation. While many developers have an idea of the benefits that cloud can offer them – scalability, ready-to-use functionality, and security, to name a few – it’s sometimes hard to figure out where to start for the specific scenario you have in mind. Luckily, our mobile developer tools docs team has you covered! Today, we’re happy to announce the availability of the “Mobile apps using Xamarin + Azure” poster. This poster serves as your one-stop guide to the most relevant cloud services that Azure has to offer to you as a mobil...
File nesting in Visual Studio Solution Explorer
We are excited to share with you a new capability in Visual Studio that was a clear ask from you, the community. Visual Studio has been nesting related files in Solution Explorer for a long time now, but not everybody agrees with the rules it uses. That’s not a problem any more because Visual Studio now gives you complete control over file nesting in Solution Exporer! We hope your continued feedback helps us evolve this capability into a fan favorite!
What’s new in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 17.5: Data Discovery and Classification
We are excited to announce the release of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 17.5! Download SSMS 17.5 and review the Release Notes to get started. SSMS 17.5 provides support for almost all feature areas on SQL Server 2008 through the latest SQL Server 2017, which is now generally available. In addition to enhancements and bug fixes, SSMS 17.5 comes with several exciting new features: •Data Discovery and Classification is a new feature for discovering, classifying, labeling and reporting sensitive data in your databases. •Query Editor now has support for a SkipsRows option for the Delimited Text External File ...
Two Lesser Known Tools for Local Azure Development using Visual Studio
If you’re developing applications that target Azure services (e.g. Web Apps, Functions, Storage), you’ll want to know about two powerful tools that come with Visual Studio 2017 and the Azure development workload: •Cloud Explorer is a tool window inside Visual Studio that lets you browse your Azure resources and perform specific tasks – like stop and start app service, view streaming logs, create storage items. •Storage Emulator is a separate application to Visual Studio that provides a local simulation of the Azure storage services. It’s really handy for testing Functions that trigger from queues, blobs or table...
Guest Blog | Solving “What the Bug?” with the Visual Studio App Center Crashes Service
This is a special guest post from Miguel Cervantes, CTO at Payit. It’s every developer’s nightmare: something goes wrong with your app in the wild, with real users, or, even worse, when you’re showing it to a venture capitalist, potential client, or at public event. In the moment, we usually have no idea what’s happened or how we can fix it. I call these, “what the bug?” moments. Finding a bug in development isn’t easy, but we use automated UI testing on real devices to catch as much as possible at Payit so we can release with confidence (thanks, App Center Test service!). But, once you ship, all bets are o...