Paul Krill
Editor at Large

Visual Studio 2022 updates spotlight productivity

news
Aug 12, 20232 mins

Visual Studio 2022 17.7 and a preview of 17.8 promise to streamline development with enhancements to diffs, comparisons, searches, pull requests, unit tests, and more.

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Microsoft has unveiled Visual Studio 2022 17.8 Preview 1, which introduces a number of improvements for day-to-day tasks, after having just released Visual Studio 2022 17.7, which also brings enhancements to streamline coding.

Productivity enhancements in Visual Studio 2022 17.8 Preview 1 include the ability to add reviewers to an Azure DevOps or GitHub pull request directly within the IDE, the addition of a summary view in diff and compare views, and case-preserving search and replace across multiple files. The summary view allows developers to see only the changes in the file with a few lines of context. 

Visual Studio 2022 17.8 also extends IntelliTest support for .NET 6 and later and .NET Standard, making it easier to generate unit tests. And it raises the limit on multi-repository support, allowing developers to work with as many as 25 repos at once in a solution. Other improvements in Visual Studio 2022 17.8:

  • When developers do a Replace, they can preserve the original casing of each match in code.
  • For C++ and game development, Build Insights now is integrated into Visual Studio 2022. Developers can see additional information relating to function generation. The Function view will tell how long a function takes during compilation along with information on the number of ForceInlinees associated.
  • For debugging and diagnostics, the .NET Counter tool now is available within the diagnostics window.
  • A Razor code action can generate an event handler method.
  • A combined template is offered for React TypeScript and ASP.NET.

New productivity features in Visual Studio 2022 17.7, released August 8, include the ability to compare any file in Solution Explorer with other files, and updated parallel stack filtering options to selectively display or hide specific threads or frames. The update also improves All-in-One Search responsiveness and Find in Files search times. The memory consumption of the C# Spell Checker has been reduced, thanks to significant improvements to its Language Server Protocol (LSP).

Other improvements in Visual Studio 2022 17.7:

  • For .NET development, the CPU usage tool now offers more detailed information for certain methods and properties. Also, auto-decompilation is offered for external .NET code.
  • For C++, developers can observe step-by-step expansion of macros.
  • For Linux and embedded development with C++, Visual Studio now makes it easier to get a one-click download of Windows Subsystem for Linux.

Visual Studio 2022 can be downloaded from the project website.

Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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