Visual Studio taps more GitHub Copilot capabilities

Microsoft has released a second preview of Visual Studio 2022 17.10, featuring GitHub Copilot integrations for generating pull request descriptions and explaining commits.

Introduced March 12, Visual Studio 2022 17.10 Preview 2 can be downloaded from the Visual Studio website. This planned update to Microsoft’s flagship IDE enables developers to generate a first draft of a pull request description driven by GitHub Copilot analysis of all changes in a pull request. Developers will get assistance in providing context to colleagues for their reviews and an added benefit of ensuring they are including the right changes in a pull request, Microsoft said.

Also, a GitHub Copilot-powered explain feature has been added to the Commit Details window to make it easier for developers to understand the contents of each commit. Developers also can view GitHub and Azure DevOps pull request comments directly in a working file in Visual Studio. Developers will need a GitHub Copilot subscription to enable the Copilot-powered features. In addition to generating pull request descriptions and explaining commits, GitHub Copilot can generate Git commit messages. This feature was introduced in Visual Studio 2022 17.10 Preview 1.

For diagnostics and debugging, the .NET Counter profiler in Visual Studio introduces two new metrics. UpDown enables real-time tracking of values with both incremental and decremental changes, while ObservableCounter automatically manages aggregated totals and offers customizable callback delegates for precise control. In addition, a filter flyout control feature allows developers to filter data points based on tags. This adjusts both summary and swimlane views according to the applied combinations, helping to streamline the monitoring of dynamic values in projects.

Other new features in Visual Studio 2022 17.10 Preview 2:

• Readability has been improved with new text formatting options in the editor. Italics as well as strikethrough and underline options have been brought to available options for configuring the way code text is displayed.
• Substantial performance improvements have been made to the WinForms out-of-process designer. Performance gains have been made for scenarios that trigger server process restart and designer reload.
• Support has been added for SQL Server Developer Tools on ARM64 devices. Features such as SQL Projects, schema compare, and query editor now are available.
• The Managed Memory window insights tab now supports Garbage Collection Insights, providing a deeper understanding of application performance.

Visual Studio 2022 17.10 Preview 2 follows an initial preview released in February, around the same time as the release of Visual Studio 2022 17.9.