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Next Release Candidate of Visual Studio 2012, Update 4 Available
The update appears to be bug fixes only.
Release Candidate (RC) 3 of the fourth update of Visual Studio 2012 is available for download.
Microsoft Technical Fellow Brian Harry announced the RC release on his blog. The update is officially known as 2012.4 RC 3. The latest RC appears to be only bug fixes affecting Visual and associated products like Team Foundation Server, LightSwitch and the .NET Framework. A full list of requirements and fixes for RC can be found in this Knowledgebase article.
VS 2012.4 RC 1, released July 31, was expected to be the last update to VS 2012. But Harry said that "there might be one more RC build before we are done," adding that if an Update 5 happens, it will be fast-tracked, without much time for user feedback to be incorporated.
While Microsoft continues to update Visual Studio 2012, the next major release, Visual Studio 2013, reached RC 1 status. Harry wrote earlier that VS 2013 supports "round-tripping," which allows developers to load projects from Visual Studio 2010 and VS 2012 into VS 2013 and have them work properly. Harry called it one of VS 2013's most-requested features.
VS 2013 is expected to Release To Manufacturing (RTM) on Oct. 18, the same day Windows 8.1 hits general availability.
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Keith Ward is the editor in chief of Virtualization & Cloud Review. Follow him on Twitter @VirtReviewKeith.