News
Visual Studio 2013 Already Set for Update 1
The update was driven by the need to make VS 2013 compatible with pre-10 versions of Internet Explorer
"We are doing a pretty quick turn of the crank on VS 2013 Update 1," reported Microsoft Technical Fellow Brian Harry on his blog today.
No kidding. Visual Studio 2013 was first released on Oct. 18, and officially launched Nov. 11. This is the Release Candidate (RC) of Update 1, meaning that Microsoft is turning out an update less than two months after the final bits have been available.
Harry noted that Update 1 won't include significant new features -- instead, the focus will be on "key bug fixes." He also said that a prime motivator for pushing out an update so quickly was to enable Visual Studio 2013 to support versions of Internet Explorer earlier than I.E. 10.
The bug fixes mostly relate to a handful of features, including the debugger; C++; IntelliTrace; Visual Studio Test; and XAML tools.
The RC is "go-live", so it can be used in a production environment and will be supported by Microsoft. Harry wrote that there won't be a corresponding Update 1 for Team Foundation Server (TFS); "We will include an update of TFS along with the next Visual Studio Update in the spring some time." He didn't give a further timeframe, other than saying that he expected it in the first half of 2014.
The fast turnaround is becoming the norm for Visual Studio. The last version, Visual Studio 2012, had four updates in total. The first one came out in November 2012, so Microsoft was updating Visual Studio on a roughly quarterly basis. Nearly every month of 2013 has seen some kind of Visual Studio update, whether it's been to Visual Studio 2012 or Visual Studio 2013.
About the Author
Keith Ward is the editor in chief of Virtualization & Cloud Review. Follow him on Twitter @VirtReviewKeith.