Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 CTP2 Adds Visual C++, Testing Improvements -- Visual Studio Magazine

Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 CTP2 Adds Visual C++, Testing Improvements

Lots of goodies packed into this release: improved Visual C++ solution browsing and GPU performance diagnosis, TFS work item performance improvements, support for Eclipse 4.4 with Team Explorer, more.

By Michael Domingo
09/23/2014

The Visual Studio team has a slew of releases this week: Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 CTP2, Team Explorer Everywhere 2013 Update 2, Visual Studio Tools for Unity 1.9.1.

The biggie, of course, is Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 CTP2, which includes some Visual C++ improvements and a roll-up of bug fixes. Also updated within this release is Team Foundation Server.

The improvements on the Visual C++ end include improvements on the browsing experience. From the support document: "Visual Studio now scans or rescans a solution and then updates the database much more quickly for large solutions. Therefore, the browsing process should be much more responsive."

What's also improved is the centralization of GPU usage data coming from Windows apps into a Performance and Diagnostics tool. It's supposed to take the guesswork out of determining whether performance issues are originating from the CPU or GPU, and it can peer into some GPU events for some supported graphics cards.

TFS 2013 Update 4 adds a number of work item performance improvements, such as addition of new chart types available when creating new work items; some new capabilities available from Web Access, including the ability to generate an e-mail message through a toolbar command and a full-screen view for queries; and the addition of the new stakeholder license, which is available through Visual Studio Online.

TEE 2013 Update 2 is a connector for developers who are working with Eclipse-based IDEs. This release mainly adds support for Eclipse 4.4 and Java 8 and the ability to browse Git repositories. Details for TEE 2013 U2 are here. Visual Studio Tools for Unity 1.9.1 contains mainly bug fixes reported by users since the initial release back in July.

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