Microsoft Launches Visual Studio 2017 Rc

The new Visual Studio 2017 RC takes advantage of Roslyn, Microsoft’s next-gen compiler technology released alongside Visual Studio 2015, and brings a bunch of new features, such as support for automated tasks, better navigation and immediate feedback about the quality of the code.

Microsoft explained that Visual Studio 2017 RC is supported for use in a production environment, but workloads and components that are marked “Preview” in the installation UI can’t be used in a production environment.

However, Visual Studio 2017 RC offers a new installation experience as it reduces the minimum footprint of Visual Studio, is installed with less system impact, and can be uninstalled cleanly. Also, it allows developers to install only the features they need. If there are any issues such as unexpected errors, abnormal installation times or if developers want to offer suggestions that will improve the performance of Visual Studio 2017 RC, they are encouraged to hit the “Report a Problem” and “Provide a Suggestion” commands.

You’ll find the same Roslyn-powered compiler, IntelliSense code completion, and refactoring experience you would expect from a Visual Studio IDE. And, since Visual Studio for Mac uses the same MSBuild solution and project format as Visual Studio, developers working on Mac and Windows can share projects across Mac and Windows transparently.

Microsoft has also introduced “Live Unit Testing” for C# and Visual Basic, which analyzes data generated at run time, runs impacted tests after an edit, then it offers feedback on the status of the tests in the editor. So, a line of executable code hit by at least one failing test will have a red X, while a line of executable code that’s hit by all passing tests will show a green checkmark. However, a line of executable code that’s not hit by tests shows a blue dash.

In addition, if the source of an issue hasn’t been identified yet, developers can rely on debugging.