Microsoft has released Visual Studio 17.10 Preview 2. This release contains features regarding GitHub Copilot-powered pull requests, support for SQL Server Developer Tools in VS on ARM64 and support for Garbage Collection Insights in Managed Memory Window.
Visual Studio 17.10 Preview 2 enables GitHub Copilot-powered pull request descriptions. A first draft can be generated for a pull request description driven by Copilot analysis of all the changes included in a pull request. To try it out, you must have an active GitHub Copilot subscription and the GitHub Copilot Chat Extension installed.
Moreover, Microsoft developers added a GitHub Copilot-powered explain feature to the Commit Details window. This makes it easier to understand the scope of each commit. Double-clicking on any commit will open the Commit Details panel in the Git Repository window. Then it is necessary to click on the “Explain Approval” icon to display a summary of the changes side by side with the code.
GitHub Copilot powered explain feature (Source: Microsoft Blog)
The next feature is about access to GitHub and Azure DevOps pull request comments directly in a working file in Visual Studio. Visual Studio users can remain in their context, making code changes and interacting with other teammates’ suggestions without switching contexts to the browser. To start testing the feature, it is necessary to enable the flag "Pull Request Comments" and check out the pull request branch.
Access to GitHub and Azure DevOps pull request comments (Source: Microsoft Blog)
Microsoft brought support for SQL Server Developer Tools in Visual Studio on ARM64. Features like SQL Projects, schema compare, data compare, query editor, and table designer are now available. Mark Downie, a principal program manager at Microsoft, explained that they took this initial action because of the demand expressed by the customers looking for SQL developer tooling support on ARM64 devices. Additionally, he encourages developers to provide feedback on the SSDT features that are most important on the Developer Community site.
In Preview 2, a feature relating to diagnostics has also appeared. The Managed Memory Window Insights tab now supports Garbage Collection Insights. This feature provides information about application performance, highlighting instances of induced GC. In addition, Garbage Collection Insights offers the ability to analyse these events along with time estimates, allowing a better understanding of the impact of induced GC on their application’s execution schedule.