PreviewLogo Visual Studio 2022 version 17.10 Preview Release Notes


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Visual Studio 2022 version 17.10 Preview Releases

Visual Studio 2022 Blog

The Visual Studio 2022 Blog is the official source of product insight from the Visual Studio Engineering Team. You can find in-depth information about the Visual Studio 2022 releases in the following posts:


17.10.0-pre.2.0 Visual Studio 2022 version 17.10 Preview 2

released Mar 12th, 2024

Summary of What's New in this Release of Visual Studio 2022 version 17.10 Preview 2

C++

Inlay Hints for C# code in Razor Files

You can now enable inlay hints for C# code in your Razor (.razor, .cshtml) files. Inlay hints display parameter names for literals and object instantiation inline with your code. Inlay hints can also display type hints for variables with inferred types (i.e. var) and lambda parameter types. This feature can be enabled via Tools > Options > Text Editor > C# > Advanced.

Inlay hints for Razor files

View and Address Pull Request Comments in Visual Studio Editor

You can now view your GitHub and Azure DevOps pull request comments directly in your working file in Visual Studio. You remain in your context, making necessary code changes and interacting with your colleagues' suggestions, without switching contexts to the browser.

Enable the feature flag, "Pull Request Comments," and checkout the pull request branch to get started:

Notification to enable showing comments in files

You can navigate between files in the pull request and comments in the files using the toolbar.

Pull request comments in editor

A known bug we're already working on improving for the next release is skipping deleted files or special file types that you cannot open from Solution Explorer. We'd love to hear your feedback as we improve on this customer-requested feature so let us know what you think here.

Improve Your Code Reviews with Generated Pull Request Descriptions

Similar to our generated Git commit message feature, you can now get a first draft for your pull request description created by GitHub Copilot. You'll get assistance in providing important context to your colleagues for their reviews and double check you're including the right changes in your pull request.

You'll need to verify you have an active GitHub Copilot subscription and the GitHub Copilot Chat Extension installed. Try it out by clicking the 'Add AI Generated Pull Request Description' sparkle pen icon within the Create a Pull Request window. Please share your feedback on this feature here.

Generate PR description with AI

Unravel Your Commit History with GitHub Copilot

Git history can be daunting to shuffle through, but it's often the best way to learn about a code base or help identify the origin of a bug. We've added a GitHub Copilot powered explain feature to the Commit Details window to make it easier to understand the contents of each commit.

You'll need to have an active GitHub Copilot subscription and the GitHub Copilot Chat Extension installed. Double click on any commit to open the Commit Details pane in the Git Repository window. Then, click on the 'Explain Commit' sparkle pen icon to get a summary of the changes side by side with the code. We plan to continue improving this feature so share your feedback here.

Explain commit message with AI

Code Search and Navigation

In All-in-one Search, we’ve made some changes to simplify the UI and improve readability. These changes include the removal of highlighting of matches in the query, removal of the status bar with counts of each result type, and move of the status messages to the filters row.

All-In-One Search UI changes

Let us know what you think on Developer Community.

Improve the readability of Visual Studio with new text formatting options

We've addressed Italic Font Support in Visual Studio 2019, bringing Italic, strikethrough, and underline as additional options for text formatting thoughout the IDE.

Formatting comments to use Italic font

To use the new options to personalize your experience, navigate to the "Fonts and Colors" page in Tools > Options > Environment where you'll find checkboxes for each of the previously mentioned options.

Image Hover Preview

Any web, desktop, or mobile developer works with images often. You reference them from C#, HTML, XAML, CSS, C++, VB, TypeScript, and even in code comments. Some images are local, and some exist online or on network shares, while others only exist as base64 encoded strings. We refer to them in numerous ways in code, but always as string values that don’t show us what the image looks like. Until now.

Image Hover Preview

We’ve included an editor tooltip that shows up when the mouse hovers over an image reference in the code editor. The tooltip shows the image in its original size but capped at maximum of 500 pixels wide and high. Below the preview image you’ll see the size in pixels and the file size in bytes. This feature was developed in close collaboration with the Visual Studio community. Thank you!

###Debugging and Diagnostics

.NET Counter profiler visualization with new UpDown and ObservableCounter instruments

The .NET counter profiler in Visual Studio now introduces support for two innovative metrics: UpDown, enabling real-time tracking of values with both incremental and decremental changes, and ObservableCounter, which autonomously manages aggregated totals, offering customizable callback delegates for precise control. In the provided screenshot, "total-hats" illustrates an UpDown counter, while "orders-pending" demonstrates an ObservableCounter.

UpDown and ObservableCounter

Moreover, we've implemented a filter flyout feature, enabling you to conveniently filter data points based on tags. This dynamically adjusts both summary and swimlane views according to the applied combinations.

UpDown and ObservableCounter Filter

This enhancement significantly enhances flexibility, streamlining the monitoring of dynamic values in projects. For instance, in web application development, the UpDown counter can monitor user interactions such as page views, while the Observable Counter optimizes server resources by efficiently managing active session totals.

**GC Insights in Managed Memory Window

The managed memory window Insights tab now supports GC Insights. This feature provides a deeper understanding of your application's performance by shedding light on instances of induced Garbage Collection (GC). These instances are generally considered undesirable as they can impede the efficiency of your processes, since they involve manual intervention rather than allowing the Garbage Collector to autonomously manage memory allocation. Furthermore, GC Insights offers the ability to analyze these occurrences with time estimates, allowing you to better comprehend the impact of induced GC on their application's execution timeline.

GC_Insights

SQL

SSDT is Supported in Visual Studio for ARM64

You can now create Database Projects in Visual Studio for ARM64. Some of the key features of SSDT that are available in this release are:

  • Database Projects (Open, Build, Publish)
  • Schema Compare
  • Data Compare
  • Query Editor
  • Table Designer
  • Database Properties Editor
  • Object Refactoring

Some Limitation of this release are as follows:

  • Debugger
  • IntelliSense
  • Database development in local machine using localdb

Windows Forms out-of-process designer

Performance improvements in Windows Forms out-of-process designer

Through a fruitful collaboration with a key partner, we are thrilled to announce substantial enhancements to the WinForms server process TypeResolutionService. These enhancements have yielded remarkable design time performance improvements, ranging from 30% to an impressive 50% in typical line of business applications. Notably, these enhancements particularly shine during scenarios that trigger server process restart and designer reload, such as project rebuilds or adjustments in project references. At the heart of these performance improvements lies a new mechanism implemented by our team, prioritizing assemblies crucial for designer load. We encourage you to explore the updated designer and share your invaluable feedback through VS Feedback channel so that we can continue improving WinForms designer performance.

Microsoft Teams Development Tool (Teams Toolkit)

  • We updated UI words and strings about Microsoft 365 developer program according to the latest changes happened in Developer Program.

Extensibility

You can now use the Visual Studio Installer that ships with Visual Studio 2022 version 17.10 Preview or later to export machine wide Marketplace extensions into a *.vsconfig file. This functionality builds upon the ability we shipped in 17.9 for the Visual Studio installer to load extensions that are specified in a *.vsconfig file. If there are other types of extensions you would like the ability to export, please let us know in the existing developer community suggestion ticket Ability to export non-marketplace or user context extensions into a *.vsconfig file.

Refer to the online documentation for more information about using *.vsconfig files.


17.10.0-pre.1.0 Visual Studio 2022 version 17.10 Preview 1

released Feb 13th, 2024

Summary of What's New in this Release of Visual Studio 2022 version 17.10 Preview 1

Visual Studio offers a diverse array of tools and features for your coding tasks. As new technologies emerge, we integrate new components to enhance your software development experience. Some of these components will be recommended additions to the workloads you've already installed. So, to streamline your update experience, starting with 17.10 P1, Visual Studio will automatically install these new recommended components when you update Visual Studio.

You can modify this setting in the Update Setting Dialog:

Include Recommended

For the list of all components in Visual Studio, including recommended components, see Visual Studio Component IDs

Improved detection of Android emulator performance impacts

Visual Studio will check for hardware acceleration when attempting to start the Android emulator and will display helpful dialogs explaining potential performance impacts. If your machine isn't configured or doesn't support hardware acceleration with the Windows Hypervisor Platform (WHPX), the Android Emulator hypervisor driver (AEHD) is now required. The Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager (HAXM) is deprecated from Android emulator API level 33 and higher, and has been replaced by AEHD on Intel processors.

For more information, see How to enable hardware acceleration with Android emulators (Hyper-V & AEHD)

Support for MCD (Multi-Column Distribution) in SSDT

Developers will now be able to set the DW compatibility level during export. We have added a new database option in the Database Settings under the "Operational Tab", it is referred to as "DW Compatibility Level". Possible values include Auto|10|20|30|40|50|9000, these are valid for Target - Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse.

DW Compatibility Level

Debugging and Diagnostics

Creating Conditional Breakpoints and Tracepoints from Expressions

This upgrade simplifies debugging with new menu options: "Insert Conditional Breakpoint" and "Insert Tracepoint." You can now create breakpoints effortlessly using property or field names and values from autos, locals, watch windows, or DataTips. This makes debugging workflows easier, especially for complex expressions.

Expression BP

Simplifying memory usage investigations with the Memory Tool

The new "Hot Path to Root" feature improves memory analysis by finding the most likely path to the root for calculating an object's total size. It transforms the heap graph into a tree, using shortcuts like prioritizing the shortest path and avoiding cycling paths to actual roots. This feature is a great starting point for memory investigations, known as the "Hot Path to Root" in the Memory Usage tool reference graph. You'll spot the hot path with a red icon in the tree below.

Hot Path To Root

Attach to Process Dialog Revamp

The Attach to Process dialog in Visual Studio has been greatly improved for better functionality and user-friendliness. These updates include seamless integration with Visual Studio themes, a more space-saving view with tooltips for connection info, and setting "Local" connection as the default for faster access. You can now easily switch between tree and list views, organize processes better with collapsible sections, and select code types with a simplified combobox. Moreover, the “Select/Track Window" feature is now easier to use, allowing two- way tracking, selecting a process highlights its window, and clicking on a window selects its process.

Attach To Process

Targeted Instrumentation for EXE

The Performance Profiler's Instrumentation Tool now allows targeted profiling for any executable (exe) file. After selecting an exe file, a targeted instrumentation dialog appears, similar to startup project profiling. This enhancement enables focused analysis of performance metrics for specific executables. Additionally, you can broaden the profiling scope by including extra Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs) using the 'Add Item' button, enhancing the examination of application performance.

Exe Instrument

Preview Unified Settings, the new Visual Studio settings experience

Starting with Visual Studio 17.10 Preview 1, you'll be able to try out an early preview of Visual Studio's reimagined settings experience. While we're still working on the overall experience and are still in the process of moving settings over to the new experience, you'll be able to try it out and share your feedback today.

With the new settings experience, it's now easier than ever for you to configure, share, and store your customized settings. You'll have more room for configuring settings, the ability to customize settings at both the user (Visual Studio install) and open solution/folder level, enhanced settings search capabilities, JSON-based storage of your settings, and more.

An image showing the new settings UI for Visual Studio

In addition to what was mentioned above, you'll now find a gear icon that opens a menu for each setting. That menu gives you an easy way to reset customized settings to their default values or share feedback with us on a particular setting.

A moving image showing the gear icon menu in Visual Studio's new settings UI

To try the new settings experience, navigate to Tools > Options > Environment > Preview Features and nable the "Unified Settings Experience" checkbox or use the Tools > Options Experience menu flyout to switch from "Classic" to "Preview". Once you've done that, restart Visual Studio and access the new settings experience via Tools > Options.

This feature is still in active development. While all settings pages haven't been migrated from the existing experience to the Unifed Settings experience, you'll still be able to manage all of your settings as Unified Settings will link over to the old UI for non-migrated settings.

Your feedback will be invaluable in helping us prioritize which pages we migrate next. In addition to which pages you'd like to see migrated next, please share your overall impressions, how we can improve it, and any additional feedback you may have on this experience via Developer Community.

Build cloud native apps with .NET Aspire

.NET Aspire is an opinionated, cloud ready stack for building observable, production ready, distributed applications. .NET Aspire is delivered through a collection of NuGet packages that handle specific cloud-native concerns. Whether you're building distributed, cloud-native applications using containerized resources like PostgreSQL and Redis, or Azure components like Storage or Service Bus, .NET Aspire will simplify your development experience and give you more visibility across your distributed apps with features like:

  • Multi-project startup and debug without needing to configure your solution
  • Built-in support for HTTP resiliency, health checks, and OpenTelemetry using a set of opinionated extensions and defaults
  • Convenient in-browser views of logs, metrics, and distributed traces of your containerized resources and .NET projects with the new .NET Aspire Dashboard launch experience
  • A new deployment methodology built atop the Azure Developer CLI (AZD), so you'll have multi-node deployment capability in most cases, without needing to write your own infrastructure code

GIF

Updates to generated Git Commit Messages

We listened to your feedback and are shortening the output of our generated Git Commit features. Share feedback on this change on the ticket in Developer Community.

Ai generated git commit message shorter output

Linking work items to pull requests

The number one request from Azure DevOps users when creating a pull request in Visual Studio was enabling work item linking. Now, you can use the Related Work Item section to view any work items you referenced in your pull request description and link work items to your pull request on Azure DevOps.

Linking work items

C++

  • We have added support for pinning CMake targets in the CMake Targets View. There is a top-level folder now for Pinned Targets. You can pin any targets by right-clicking and selecting the Pin option in the context menu.

Pinning a CMake Target via the context menu

You can also unpin any target in the Pinned Targets folder by selecting Unpin.

  • The MSVC toolset will increment its minor version number from 19.39 (VS 2022 v17.9) to 19.40 (VS 2022 v17.10). The MSVC toolset will be version 19.40.33521.0 in the preview 1 release. For more details, see the MSVC Toolset Minor Version Number 14.40 in VS 2022 v17.10 blog post.

  • You can now use Build Insights to view your template instantiation information. Template instantiation collection must be activated in Tools > Options > Build Insights. Recursive Template Instantiation

  • We have added additional Unreal Engine Macros to be indented in accordance with the UE Code Style.

  • You can now keep our Unreal Engine plugin needed for Unreal Engine Test Adapter running in the background, greatly reducing startup costs. This is an opt-in feature that can be activated via Tools > Options > Unreal Engine.


Known Issues

  • Users who have privilege management software from Delinea installed may experience issues launching Visual Studio. Delinea is aware of this issue and has addressed it. Please contact them through https://delinea.com/support to get instructions on how to resolve this issue.”

  • Some developers are experiencing hangs when switching between build configurations (e.g. from Release to Debug). Affected developers can set the environment variable 'MSBUILDDISABLEFEATURESFROMVERSION=17.10'. This workaround is intended to mitigate the problem while we work towards a permanent solution. Additional details are available at the Developer Community site.


Note

This update may include new Microsoft or third-party software that is licensed separately, as set out in the 3rd Party Notices or in its accompanying license.