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AI Marks New Release of Visual Studio 2022 17.9
AI assistance and better extensibility mark the new release of Visual Studio 2022 v17.9, which shipped today with many core productivity and performance enhancements.
"From AI-powered Git commit messages and enhanced C++ game development tools to .NET/C# advancements and responsive project management capabilities, this release caters to a wide array of you and your team's development needs," said Microsoft's Maddy Montaquila in a Feb. 13 announcement.
Indeed, AI taking over Git commits was introduced in v17.9's first preview back in November.
[Click on image for larger, animated GIF view.] AI-Generated Commit in Animated Action (source: Microsoft).
That functionality reportedly can help developers in several ways, including:
- Your teammates can more effectively review your changes in a pull request
- Your Git history tells a story that includes both "what" was changed and "why"
- You can easily pinpoint the origins of a bug or breaking change
- You save yourself and/or coworkers hours of digging around while troubleshooting
- You make your repository easier to ramp up to and contribute to in the future
"One of the things I always struggle with is coming up with descriptive Git commit messages for whatever changes I've made in my local repo," Montaquila said in today's announcement. "The new generated commit message feature is designed to assist you in succinctly describing your changes, ensuring clarity and relevance in your commits."
Here are highlights of the release grouped under the areas of productivity, C++ game development, .NET/C# and ecosystem:
Productivity Enhancements:
- Ability to open a Pull Request from Visual Studio or the browser
[Click on image for larger view.] Create a Pull Request from Visual Studio (source: Microsoft).
- Insights into Event Handler Leaks to help find memory leaks
- Instrumentation tool now includes a "Start with Collection Pause" option
- Option to switch between single and multiple rows in the document well
- Non-modal Debug Visualizers for concurrent interaction with the Editor
- Responsive Git Ref labels in the Git Repository window for better branch visibility
- Multi-project configuration for streamlined debugging in complex solutions
- Multi-folder open support
- Auto-surround selections with quotes or brackets for faster coding
C++ and Game Development:
- Streamlined Unreal Engine Blueprint references with reduced latency and resource usage
- Improved IntelliSense for Unreal Engine projects for better accuracy
- Remote Linux unit testing support for C++ projects targeting Linux
- Ability to specify a custom CMake executable
- Memory Layout visualization for classes, structs, and unions
- #include Diagnostics for detailed analysis of #include directives
.NET/C#:
- Automatic Deoptimization for debugging with .NET 8, optimizing code on-the-fly
- Razor snippets for faster HTML coding in Razor (.razor) files
- Multi-targeting framework support (TFM) for Razor files
- Blazor CRUD scaffolding for .NET 8 projects, including Entity Framework support
- Live Property Explorer support for .NET MAUI to inspect XAML properties during debugging
Ecosystem and Extensibility:
- Ability to load extensions using .vsconfig files, making it easier to standardize extension use across teams and projects
- Introduction of Visual Studio Subscriptions benefits discovery through a new toolbar icon, linking to additional resources and support
More information on new features and functionality can be found in the release notes.
Microsoft's Developer Community site for feedback such as feature requests and bug reports can also be used as sort of a roadmap for Visual Studio 2022 when used to search "[vs-core-ide-roadmap]". The top item there, with some 400 votes and 63 comments, is "Full Git submodule support."
About the Author
David Ramel is an editor and writer for Converge360.