The first Preview for Visual Studio 2022 17.6 is now available! This release expands on the recently released 17.5 version of Visual Studio and aims at enhancing your productivity whether you’re a .NET developer, a game developer, and/or a C++ developer.
Why should you try the latest preview? Because it’s like living in the future – you get to try all the capabilities that we’re actively working on for the upcoming 17.6 release, influence their development early by providing your suggestions and by reporting any problem you encounter. And you get to do that while reliably continuing your critical work, as Previews always install and run side-by-side the officially supported Visual Studio releases.
This blog summarizes the top changes in this release. To explore the full list of improvements, you can check out the Visual Studio 2022 17.6 Preview 1 Release Notes.
IDE Productivity
Brace Pair Colorization
You can now visually distinguish each set of opening and closing braces for your code making it easier to see your code’s scope or find any missing braces.
In addition to C++, brace pair colorization expands now to C#, TypeScript, JavaScript, Visual Basic and Razor.
You can enable or disable colorization by going to Tools > Options > Environment > Preview Features and checking “Enable Brace Pair Colorization”.
If you have feedback to share with us about this feature, please contribute to the discussion on Developer Community.
Git Line Unstaging
To continue improving our line-staging (aka interactive staging) feature, we’ve added unstage.
GitHub Issues
The GitHub Issues integration allows you to search and reference your recent issues from the commit message box in VS, in response to this suggestion ticket.
You can reference an issue or a pull request by typing # or clicking on the # button in the lower right side of the commit message text box. If you weren’t already authenticated to access related issues, you will now be prompted to sign in to take advantage of this feature. Learn more about this feature from the blog.
.NET
IntelliCode API Usage Examples for C#
Ever wish you could easily access code examples for APIs you work with? IntelliCode API Usage Examples makes that a reality. IntelliCode API Usage Examples is a feature that lets you see real-world examples of how other developers have used a given function. Examples shown are from public open source repositories on GitHub.
To use the feature, hover over any supported function and click on “GitHub Examples and Documentation”.
Visualizers Support for .NET Remote Debugging
You can now use the IEnumerable and DataSet Visualizer to inspect your variables/objects when debugging .NET on Unix via SSH, Docker, or WSL.
.NET MAUI Tooling for ARM64 Devices
Preview support for .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI) tooling in Visual Studio is now available on ARM64 devices.
You can now enable installation of .NET MAUI from the Visual Studio installer when running on ARM64 versions of Windows. Please note that Hot Restart and Google’s Android Emulators are not supported at this time.
C++ Gaming
Unreal Engine Log Viewer
Available as a preview feature, you can now view Unreal Engine logs without leaving Visual Studio.
To see the logs from the Unreal Engine Editor, click View > Other Windows > UE Log. To filter your logs, click on the “Categories” or “Verbosity” dropdowns.
Since this is an experimental feature, please leave your feedback by commenting on Unreal Engine Log Viewer – Developer Community.
Code Analysis integration – Unreal Header Tool
As we are continue building Unreal Engine integrations into Visual Studio, we frequently hear from our game developers the need to include code analysis for Unreal Engine projects. As a first step, you can now see warnings and errors generated by the Unreal Header Tool within Visual Studio. The Unreal Header Tool emits warnings and errors while parsing Unreal related C++ headers. You can find these warnings in the Error List as well as see them visually denoted by purple squiggles in your code. Follow the link to learn more about Unreal Header Tool.
While in Preview, this feature is off-by-default. To enable it, go to Options > Environment > Preview Features and check “Code Analysis with Unreal Header Tool (C++)”. Since this is a preview feature, please leave your feedback by commenting on Code Analysis Feedback – Developer Community.
In the example above, you can see Visual Studio reminding you of an incorrect spelling of a UFUNCTION specifier and a missing GENERATED_BODY macro.
To try these new features for Unreal Engine, make sure the “IDE support for Unreal Engine” is selected in the “Game development with C++” workload in the Visual Studio Installer.
C++ Cross-platform
CMake Debugger
The new CMake Debugger allows you to debug your CMakeLists.txt file for any CMake project within Visual Studio. You can set breakpoints based on filenames, line numbers or when CMake errors/warnings are triggered, and step into, over, or out of them. You can also pause or continue the currently executing scope. The call stack in the CMake debugger shows filenames and lines and you are able to set a watch on defined variables.
To start the CMake Debugger, you can select “Configure with CMake Debugging” from:
- the context menu when right-clicking on your CMakeLists.txt file or
- the “Project” main menu.
A Debug link will be available in Solution Explorer when CMake generation fails:
Currently, this only works with bundled CMake, and projects targeting WSL or remote machines are not supported yet. To learn more, please see “CMake debugger allows you to debug your CMake scripts and more“.
Remote File Explorer for Unix
You can now use the new Remote File Explorer to browse, upload, and download files to your remote machines listed in the Connection Manager. All you need to do is install it through the Linux and Embedded Development workload.
From the toolbar, you are also able to:
- Toggle the target machine by using the dropdown in the Remote File Explorer
- Refresh directory content and sync changes
- Delete or rename files and directories.
You also can cancel any ongoing file operations using the bottom pane. You can open the Remote File Explorer from the menu View > Remote File Explorer.
Let us know what you think and share any additional features you’d like to see by commenting on Remote File Explorer – Developer Community entry.
Import C and C++ embedded STM32CubeIDE projects
You can now import STM32CubeIDE projects for embedded development within Visual Studio. Just select File > Open > Import STM32CubeIDE project.
Importing a STM32 project generates a CMake project with device flashing and debugging settings for STLink. You must have the STM32CubeIDE installed with the support package for your board. This enables use of the compilers and supporting applications provided by ST. If your project has an .ioc file you can open the context menu and open STM32CubeMX for your project. Learn more about importing STM32CubeIDE projects.
Share your feedback and help us build a better Visual Studio!
As you use Visual Studio, let us know what you love, what you like, and where you’d like us to improve. You can share feedback with us via Developer Community: report any bugs or issues via report a problem and share your suggestions for new features or improvements to existing ones.
Stay connected with the Visual Studio team by following us on YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Twitch and on Microsoft Learn.
As always, we appreciate the time you’ve spent reporting issues and hope you continue to give us feedback on how we’re doing and what we can improve.
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