Microsoft Introduces New Tools for Developers

The free Visual Studio Code editor for Windows, Mac and Linux, as well as Microsoft’s Android emulator are good examples for this. The Visual Studio Emulator for Android is a tool within the full Visual Studio 2015 suite, which Microsoft brought to Mac users for the first time back in April.

As Microsoft also announced today, the next update to Visual Studio 2015 – creatively named “Update 1” – will launch on November 30 and include updated tools for building Universal Windows app, a pull requests hub, the ability to debug Java source code in the IDE, and support for TypeScript 1.7, among other things. A new build has also been published, adding an extension mechanism to the editor.

Included in the renamed and updated offering are features such as a new Team Foundation plugin for IntelliJ IDEA and previews of extensions for code search, package management and release management.

“With state-of-the-art tools, the power of the cloud, training, and support, it’s our most comprehensive free developer program ever”, the company wrote on the Visual Studio Dev Essentials Web page.

In addition to extensions, Microsoft will also be using Marketplace to sell a new kind of Visual Studio subscription. Developers can learn more at http://www.visualstudio.com.

Microsoft is also adding monthly and annual cloud subscriptions for Visual Studio Professional and Enterprise.

Based on the cross-platform Electron platform, Visual Studio Code runs on Windows, OS X, and Linux, supporting.Net and JavaScript development. This comes with a “Go-Live License”, meaning that they can be deployed and used in production environments and should cleanly upgrade to the final builds when available. Among the biggest developments is the introduction of Visual Studio Dev Essentials, a new, free program that offers developers everything they need to create applications on any device or operating system. Perhaps that is related to there being more news about Android support than for Windows Mobile.

Building for iOS does, however, still require access to a Mac; Visual Studio remotely controls the OS X toolchain to perform the actual building and application deployment.

“Our goal is to help developers ensure quality in every build. Integrating Perfecto’s ability to automate testing on real devices against real user conditions is a powerful complement to VSO’s Build features”, said Mitra Azizirad, General Manager, Developer Platform Marketing, Microsoft. As a part of this release, Microsoft is introducing a free tier for the service that lets a developer manage up to two apps.

Xamarin 4 will be supported in Visual Studio 2015 when Update 1 is installed. Getting everything in one place makes a lot of sense, as it allows developers to see just what their options are – while giving Microsoft the opportunity to upsell additional services in its new Visual Studio Marketplace. So too is access to the Office 365 Graph API that allows software to explore the connections between data within Office 365. The preview supports.NET development on Windows Server and the company says Linux support is coming in 2016.

Microsoft is thinking further about the future of Visual Studio. “We are pleased to continue working with Microsoft in arming developers and testers with the best tools on the market”. This should make it easier to keep extensions and plugins up to date. Extending it to all Visual Studio C++ development is an exciting prospect for C++ developers; although Microsoft’s own compiler has made great strides in recent years, clang offers superior standards support in a number of areas.

Harry describes the Marketplaceas an evolution of the existing Visual Studio Gallery.