Microsoft’s Amanda Silver has announced that the company will be releasing the first preview of Visual Studio 2022 this summer (2021Q3). This latest version of the long-standing tool will be fully 64-bit, and is featuring improved collaboration tools and support for the upcoming .NET 6 as well as the latest C++20 keywords and functionality.
The move to a fully 64-bit editor is one that has been requested by developers for quite some time, dating back to at least VS2010. Those who develop large solutions were increasingly hitting the memory limitations imposed by a 32-bit editor—as it is not just a developer’s code which impacts the editor’s memory usage it is also the language services powering IntelliSense and other supporting editor functions.
Collaboration and tighter integrating with development teams is a big focus of VS2022. LiveShare debuted in VS2017, and provided developers the ability to work together on the same solution. While it could benefit pair programming and other scenarios, it did not provide for communication within Visual Studio. Now developers can use text chat within VS2022 while conducting a LiveShare session so an external tool is not required for communication. Silver notes that organizations concerned about security can utilize session policies to ensure LiveShare follows the appropriate internal compliance policies.
.NET 6 is scheduled for release in November 2021, and VS2022 intends to be ready for it by including support for .NET MAUI (Multi-Platform App UI) and ASP.NET Blazor. At the moment exact details of what support this entails is not provided—with the exception of a preview of .NET Hot Reload working in conjunction with a Blazor web app and VS2022.
VS2022 promises support for C++20, although specifics of what exact language features are to be supported was not provided. More details VS2022's C++20 implementation are expected at the May Pure Virtual conference. CMake, Linux, and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) support are planned to be more tightly integrated.
Visual Studio for Mac is not ignored, with Silver stating that it will get an overall of its UI to better take advantage of the native macOS toolkit. The enhanced Git experience present in the Windows version of Visual Studio will also be coming to the Mac as part of the 2022 release.
Whats not to like about this release? Well, some users reacting to this announcement are concerned about the enhanced focus on Git and GitHub, which seems to be occurring at the expense of support for Azure DevOps (formerly known as TFS) and its roadmap. Further, Microsoft’s Leslie Richardson noted that all Visual Studio extensions will need to be rewritten to support the 64-bit editor, and full details on the changes required are expected around Preview 1. An early look at what will be necessary to write compliant extensions will be given by Mads Kristensen on April 23. Finally, while this is not a direct critcism of VS022, some developers expressed concern over comments that suggest VS2022 will be the official development platform for .NET 6, thus requiring VS2019 users to upgrade.