News

Microsoft Asks for Votes on Visual Studio 2022 for Mac Issues

• By David Ramel
• 04/18/2022

Microsoft's dev team for Visual Studio 2022 for Mac is seeking more developer feedback on top issues faces by users as it polishes up the IDE, which just shipped in Preview 9.

As the team follows up on big efforts to move the IDE's UI to fully native code and migrate to .NET 6 (for native support of Apple's M1 arm64 processor), it fixed many issues already filed and appealed for more feedback in the form of votes on existing issues in addition to filing new issues.

"Another way you can help us focus on the most important issues: search for existing issues on the Developer Community site and add your vote to items affecting you," said Jordan Matthiesen, senior program manager, in an April 12 blog post. "When you click on an already reported issue you can either upvote or downvote items using the up and down arrows next to the vote count.

"When reviewing issues reported on the latest releases, we always start by looking at items with the most votes to get a feel for the level of impact on developers. If you upvote an issue, please add a comment with additional steps to reproduce the issue. You can also privately upload your log files to make it easier for us to troubleshoot."

As far as issues fixed in Preview 9, he highlighted:

• Can't move files in VS 2022 for Mac: "I am trying to click and drag a file to a folder in Solution Explorer, but the file does not move to the folder when I drop it. There does not seem to be a way to move the files within Visual Studio."
• IDE horizontal and vertical splitters become unresponsive: "1) open visual sudio for mac (17, 8230). 2) open a solution. 3) taken the solution panel vertical splitter and drag backwards and forwards. 4) note the drag ends (while dragging) and the panel becomes unresponsive. 5) resize the application window to gain access to the splitters again. 6) repeat with the 'bottom' panel horizontal splitter. 7) observe the same effect as note in 4 8) perform step 5 again. an unresponsive splitter is one that the IDE won't allow you to 'grab' equipment on which this has been observed: intel macbook pro, 2019, i9 2.3ghz, 32gb ram, 2tb ssd, macOS 12.3.1"
• Cannot debug unit tests in Visual Studio 2022 Mac Preview: "Running on a Mac Mini M1 (macOS Monterey v12.1) Visual studio 17.07.0 Preview Build 6509
  
  "I'm using XUnit for my unit tests. I can run unit tests without issue, but if I try to debug I get the following in the Application Output view: Unable to attach to CoreCLR. Unknown Error: 0x80131c3c
  
  "I'm able to debug applications like normal.
• XAML files refuse to save: "After working on a Xamarin Forms project for some time, occasionaly, Visual Studio for Mac refuses to save changes to a XAML file I have open. I have tried saving from the File menu, using CMD+S.
  
  "The only way I can get around this is by copying the in-memory contents to the clipboard, closing then reopening the file, pasting, then saving. But sometimes even that doesn't work. I have to close VS entirely to get back to work.
  
  "I'm not sure exactly how to reproduce this problem, but it seems to occur when I move or rename XAML files (along with their C# twins). I do this fairly frequently when I'm working on new projects.
  
  This is one of several issues that brings my productivity to a screeching halt.
• Cannot load Apple certificates: "[severity:I'm unable to use this version] Cannot download signing certificates from Apple Connect. Tested with 2 different developer accounts with both VS 2022 and VS 2019. I get the error below: There was an error while loading your certificates: This request is firbiddn for security reasons: Authentication Error. Xcode 7.3 or later in required to continue developing with your Apple ID.

The Preview 9 release notes provide more details on all of the above along with more tweaks affecting Azure Functions v3, the Git Changes window and more.