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Tools, Services Supporting Visual Studio 2017

With Visual Studio 2017 making its debut next week, a number of software and services that comprise its tooling ecosystem have already embedded support for the development platform.

• By Michael Domingo
• 03/02/2017

UPDATED: With Visual Studio 2017 having made its debut, a number of software and services that comprise its tooling ecosystem have already embedded support for the development platform. Here's a short list of ones we know about, so far:

DevExpress has been keeping up with VS 2017 support. It's kind of old news, but DevExpress Universal 16.1.8 has been supporting the release candidates as of November; the company blog covers some details of the issues with working with their tools with the RCs here. It's reasonable to expect they'll be supporting VS 2017 at general availability.

Progress Telerik has been keeping up with support for VS 2017, with support for the most recent RCs among an array of WebUI and DesktopUI controls, as well in other toolings, in its DevCraft Complete and Ultimate collections.

A number of JetBrains tools have initial VS 2017 RC support, in its Resharper Ultimate 2016.3 VS developer add-on collection; the company blog seems to indicate support for the GA version will be right on the heels of its release.

SyncFusion's Essential Studio 2017 Volume 1 notes that it's already got VS 2017 support built into its wide array of VS and .NET tool offerings.

Devart, whose slew of VS developer productivity and connector tools includes ADO.NET providers for database and cloud apps and ORM tools, is also supporting VS 2017 across its offerings, and also providing a discount on new orders for a limited time. 

GrapeCity, another developer tooling company, blogs about a hotfix for its ActiveReports 11 that will allow use with VS 2017 on release; a service pack update will also roll out to users later this month. The company also touts in an older release from November that its ComponentStudio suite has VS 2017 RC support.

.NET and Java bridge tool developer JNBridge notes on its home page that its JNBridgePro 8.0 has full VS 2017 compatibility.

According to a Google Docs post here, the makers of version control software tools VisualSVN will support VS 2017 at release with its VisualSVN 6.0; as of that doc posting, it was being beta tested.

Leadwerks, a game development company for the Steam platform, also expects to have fairly immediate VS 2017 support, according to a blog post here (dated Nov. 16, 2016).

IntervalZero's RTX64 SDK FOR real-time OS appdev is waiting in the wings with its extension for VS 2017, available in the Visual Studio Marketplace.

Software installation vendor InstallAware in February released InstallAware X6 with VS 2017 support embedded in the VS 2017 toolbar, allowing builds from APPX, App-V and Windows Installer.

Parasoft, a software testing solutions provider, now has VS 2017 support in its Parasoft Virtualize/SOAtest Desktop offering; the company also is providing six months of free access to its tools for use with VS 2017, according to this release.

And finally, we understand some readers have been playing in the AWS cloud. What we know so far for those using the AWS Toolkit for VS is that the company has work in progress to support VS 2017. Evidence of that is noted in this forum message.

[Editor's Note: We'll update this list as we learn of other tools and services that will support Visual Studio 2017. If you know of any others, drop us a note at [email protected] with VS 2017 Support" on the subject line of your message.]

In no particular order, some more links of developer interest around the Web:

Significant Garbage Collector Changes in .NET 4.6.2 (AlphaGeek) -- More efficient pin promotion and free space efficiency.

Is it the beginning of the end for Visual Basic? (The Register) -- Writer Tim Anderson: "Although Torgersen insists that his team "will do everything necessary to keep [VB] a first-class citizen of the .NET ecosystem", the prospects for the language are not good."

Deep Dive into Microsoft Teams (Redmondmag.com) -- Microsoft Teams is Redmond's response to the popularity of collab tools like Slack.

After MongoDB Debacle, Expect More Ransomware, Open Source Attacks in 2017 (ADTmag) -- Security experts predict this incident won't be enough to convince companies to harden security.

VS Code Integrated Terminal Now Defaults to PowerShell. Here's How to Change It Back to cmd.exe (jongallant.com) -- Not ready to use PowerShell all the time

Microsoft's AI group debuts customizable speech-to-text technology, rapidly expanding 'cognitive services' for developers (GeekWire) -- "Microsoft says it lets developers upload a unique vocabulary — such as alien names in Human Interact's VR game Starship Commander — to produce a sophisticated language model for recognizing voice commands and other speech from users."

IL Viewer for VS Code (Channel9 - Coding4Fun) -- "...VS Code extension that quickly and easily takes your C# and provides you a glimpse at the resulting IL."

Provision AWS Resources with a VSTS release pipeline (ClemensReijnen.nl) -- "... AWS offers similar template and cloud platform provisioning capabilities to what we have on Azure using ARM."

More Evidence that Users Pick Terrible Passwords (RCPmag) -- Keeper Security survey shows end users unwilling to defend themselves.

Have you come across any interesting links, or does your company have a new or updated product or service targeted at Visual Studio or .NET developers? Tell me about it at [email protected].