Microsoft has announced the availability of the latest release of Visual Studio 2022. Version 17.6 includes updates aimed at developer productivity, developer experience, and tailors to both experienced and new developers.
“This latest release delivers a range of powerful tools and features designed to empower you in crafting cutting-edge applications and experiences. The user-friendly environment, along with essential features like code completion, debugging, refactoring, and version control, caters to both experienced and novice developers striving to achieve their software development objectives, solidifying its position as the go-to IDE for millions of developers worldwide,” Martin Luparo, group product manager for the Microsoft C++ team, wrote in a blog post.
It includes some performance enhancements as well, such as improved Git File History performance, faster opening and closing times for Chromium, and increased speed in Performance Profiler’s stop collection operation.
This release will include improvements to the All-in-One Search UI, which allows developers to use one search for both code and Visual Studio features. Now results will display on two lines of space, the default preview has been moved to the bottom, and the window size and location will remain persistent between suggestions.
Developers can now make use of Sticky Scroll, which keeps important context — such as namespaces, classes, and methods — on the screen as you scroll through your code. This feature was first introduced in one of the preview releases in 17.5.
Another Editor improvement is Brace Pair colorization, which helps developers better visually distinguish sets of opening and closing braces, to make it easier to find missing braces.
There is also now a Spell Checker feature for C#, C++, and Markdown files.
Visual Studio 2022 also includes a number of debugging and diagnostic features. Breakpoints Groups is a new feature that lets developers organize breakpoints into groups to make debugging, testing, and troubleshooting easier.
Other community suggested features are support for .natstepfilter and .natjmc and searching and highlighting in the Call Stack window. Also, .NET Remote Debugging added support for visualizers for IEnumerable and DataSet, Visual Studio Profiler now shows live graphs, and Instrumentation in Visual Studio Profiler has been improved.
New Git collaboration updates include additional information given by the Improve Merge Dialog, and Git Line Unstaging, which allows developers to unstage changes line by line.
Developers can also now stage changes and commit during building, and Link to GitHub Issues is another useful new feature that allows developers to reference GitHub Issues from within Visual Studio.
There are also a number of new .NET enhancements for building modern applications. The Android Manifest Editor makes it easier to set APK properties and request device-specific permissions.
For JavaScript and TypeScript developers, CodeLens will allow discovery of references to symbols in those languages and enable quick navigation among them. And JS/TS Syntax Highlighting will improve the development process as well by enhancing code readability.
And finally, there are a number of updates for developing APIs, such as Endpoint Exploring and .http file support for testing APIs.
To learn more about any of these features, visit Microsoft’s blog post about the release.
