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InfoQ Homepage News VS2015 Update 2 Focuses on Stability

VS2015 Update 2 Focuses on Stability

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Microsoft has released the first preview of Update 2 for Visual Studio 2015.  This second major update to VS2015 is focused on fixing a significant number of bugs that can occur while using three of the major languages:  C++, C#, and Visual Basic.  Developers who are used to experiencing crashes, out of memory exceptions, and project loading delays are expected to benefit from the patches being introduced in Update 2.  The fixes also address multiple issues that can arise during setup which previously prevented or delayed installation.

Those who use Git with VS2015 may find the addition of Git LFS (Large File Storage) useful.  Git LFS is used to provide Git-like functionality when working with large files.  Rather than store large files (videos, Photoshop files, etc) in Git itself, pointers to these files are stored instead that contain instructions to where these files can be found.  That way large binary files can benefit from some aspects of version tracking without requiring them to be stored directly within Git—a task for which a typical Git repository is ill-suited.  Besides LFS support, Git in VS2015 has been expanded to support reset (--hard and --mixed), cherry-picking, and staging.

Users should additional improvements to the overall performance of VS2015 in several areas that include:

  • Opening and browsing with Team Explorer
  • Reduced startup time when extensions have been installed
  • Stability of keeping managed language projects open for long periods of time
  • Long filename paths in projects under source control

VS2015 Update 2 CTP is available now for experimentation, however it is important to note that it is considered to be a prerelease version and should not be installed in a production environment.  Release notes and a list of repaired bugs are both available on MSDN.

(Feb 24 - Updated to correct wording in last paragraph.  Hat tip to reader Muhammad Ali.)

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