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Update: Visual Studio 2017 RC 3 Is Re-Released

The third release candidate of the venerable, all-encompassing and integrated Microsoft developer platform has been re-released after being pulled for a short time due to reports of developer machines crashing due to an odd installation issue.

UPDATE: The Visual Studio team re-released Visual Studio 2017 Release Candidate 3 late Friday, January 27. The re-release comes after an initial release on January 26 that was quickly pulled down when developers soon after installing it reported machines crashing when trying to start from a VS update notification. That issue has since been resolved. (Note that the text below is unaltered, so as to provide context for this update; Montgomery's blog, linked below, mentions the installation issue and the re-release.)

The Visual Studio team posted on its blog that it had released Visual Studio 2017 Release Candidate 3, yesterday, only to turn around and pull it from the developing public due to installation issues.

According to a top note on a blog post from Director of Program Management for Visual Studio John Montgomery: "We've received reports of an issue with the installer crashing when starting it from the Visual Studio update notification. We've decided to unpublish the release for now." That the release notes and blog remain online shows promise that RC 3's installation issues will be dealt with in quick fashion.

Of course there's lots of changes throughout this release, but Montgomery highlights the more significant improvements:

  • .NET Core, ASP.NET Core Workloads: They're now no longer in preview mode, and come with a number of bug fixes and tooling improvements, including new CLI commands and templates, and Nuget and MSBuild fixes and updates.
  • Team Explorer: Simplified process for connecting to projects and repos via new Connect page; projects don't need to be connected prior to cloning repositories.
  • Advanced Save: It's an option that was removed in earlier versions, but is now re-added.
  • Installation: The release notes has a laundry list of new installation features -- new installation methods, a retry button for failed installs, offline installation layout support, plus fixes for some known install issues, including some dealing with hung installs.

There's lots more, of course, with lots of changes throughout all the specific languages options (C#, F#, C++), as well as among the specific tooling options (Tools for Apache Cordova, Tools for XAML Apps, Tools for UWP, SQL Server Data Tools, Office Developer Tools, TypeScript 1.2, JavaScript Language Service...). The release notes detail all the changes are here.

Montgomery notes in the blog that the team "removed the Data Science and Python Development workloads. As we've been closing on the VS release, some of the components weren't going to meet all the release requirements, such as translation to non-English languages. They'll re-appear soon as separate downloads." He adds that "F# is still available in the .NET Desktop and .NET Web development workloads."

Barring any other installation problems, expect RC 3 to be available before the end of the month. To download VS 2017 RC 3 once it's fixed, go here.

About the Author

Michael Domingo is a long-time software publishing veteran, having started up and managed several developer publications for the Clipper compiler, Microsoft Access, and Visual Basic. He's also managed IT pubs for 1105 Media, including Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine and Virtualization Review before landing his current gig as Visual Studio Magazine Editor in Chief. Besides his publishing life, he's a professional photographer, whose work can be found by Googling domingophoto.

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