Visual Studio Update 2 (CTP 2) Available

  • Article

Download the Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 CTP 2 package now

 

 

From Brian Harry’s blog post [highlighting added by me]:

https://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2013/01/30/announcing-visual-studio-2012-update-2-vs2012-2.aspx

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Today we released the first Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 (VS2012.2). It’s exciting to see the next update of VS working it’s way to completion. There’s going to be a ton of cool new capabilities in Update 2. Not all of them are available in this CTP but many are. Below, I’ve described the significant improvement’s that you’ll find in this CTP and I’ve grouped them into 4 categories:

  1. Agile Planning
  2. Quality Enablement
  3. Line of Business Development
  4. Developer Experience

 

This CTP is NOT a “go-live” CTP. It is for evaluation only. We’re trying to learn from Update 1 and get feedback earlier in the cycle. We will be having “go-live” pre-releases of Update 2 in order to facilitate that but not quite yet.

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Brian’s post has some great stuff in it with plenty of screenshots. 

 

 

You also can get more detail here from the KB article found here:

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2797912

 

I’ve reproduced some of the information from the KB article verbatim with a little formatting to make it easier to read:

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PLEASE NOTE: Technology Previews have not been subject to final validation and are not meant to be run on production workstations or servers. Since installation of Visual Studio CTPs and installation of Team Foundation Server CTPs work differently, please read the recommended upgrade approach for each product carefully.

For Visual Studio: The recommended approach for upgrading Visual Studio on developer workstations is installing the latest Visual Studio Update CTP on top of an RTM release or a previous CTP build of that Update. Visual Studio CTPs can be upgraded to a different build.

For Team Foundation Server: Do not install a Team Foundation Server Update CTP on a production server, as it could put the server in an unsupported state. Unlike with Visual Studio CTPs, installing a Team Foundation Server CTP fully replaces the current release on the server with the CTP. Team Foundation Server CTPs cannot be upgraded to future CTPs or releases nor "downgraded" to a previous release.

 

 

 

New technology improvements and fixed issues in Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 CTP 2

New technology improvements

Agile Planning
Easy and flexible agile planning for any team.

  • Team Foundation Server

    • New work item tags provide lightweight metadata for work items
    • "Connect" dialog box is added to Team Explorer to locate different team project connections and projects
    • Ability to send a work item as an email message in TFS Web Access

Quality Enablement
Lightweight browser-based test management and execution to reduce the time that is required to continuously enable quality in software projects.

  • Unit Test

    • Windows Store app unit testing now supports interaction with the UI thread
    • Windows Store app unit testing now supports using an async lambda inside Assert.ThrowsException
    • New unit test playlists enable control and execution of a subset of unit tests
    • Group unit tests by class

  • UI Testing

    • Extended cross-browser support

  • Microsoft Test Manager

    • Customize resolution states & failure states for test analysis

  • Test Case Manager (Web Access)

    • Ability to view and edit test cases in a test plan from TFS Web Access
    • Ability to run manual test cases and file bugs from TFS Web Access

Line of Business Development
Additional capabilities to modernize existing LOB applications and create new business applications across connected devices that are powered by continuous services.

  • SharePoint

    • Web & load testing support for SharePoint applications
    • Record and playback support through Coded UI for performing UI validations on SharePoint 2013 applications

  • Phone Tools

    • Enable build and deploy workflows of Windows Phone projects from the command line without having to install the full Windows Phone developer tools

Developer Experience
Improvements in the IDE to create a better and more productive developer experience.

  • Code Map

    • Improvements in code map debugger integration and responsiveness

  • Debugger

    • Symbol loading improvements in IntelliTrace and profiler

  • IDE

    • Blue theme now available in the Visual Studio 2012 IDE

  • Blend for Visual Studio 2012

    • Support for Sketchflow, WPF, and Silverlight

  • Performance & Reliability

    • Performance improvements in XAML designer load for the following scenarios:
      • Large Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) applications
      • Working with third-party custom controls

 

 

Debugger

ASP.NET Editor

  • You cannot add multiple CSS classes in the "class" attribute of any element by using IntelliSense. IntelliSense cannot show a list of available CSS classes if you press Spacebar to add another CSS class.

Visual Studio IDE

MS Build

Windows Development Tools

  • The multiple-scale image support feature that was included in Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 incorrectly requires a scale 140 badge logo image of size 34 x 34 pixels. The size should be 33 x 33 pixels.

Windows Form

C++

  • 752266: Visual C++ application that is compiled by using the cl /O2 /arch:AVX /EHsc command in the Visual Studio 2012 x86 Native Tools Command Prompt intermittently exits.

    (https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/752266)

  • Assume that you configure the platform target to x64 for a Visual C++ application. You compile the application by using the /O2 or /Ox optimization option. In this situation, incorrect machine code is generated when the compile converts int64 type to int32 type inside a loop. For example, you may compile the following code:

     int A[8];for (__int64 i=0; i<8; i++) {  A[i] = i + 1;}

  • When you compile a Visual C++ application that contains the following code together with the /analyze option on an ARM platform, an internal compiler error occurs:

     class Base {};

template <typename T>
class Derived : public Base {};

template <typename P3>
Derived<P3> Make( P3 p3 );

void foo()
{
Base& b = Make(sizeof(long));
}

  • IntelliSense becomes unresponsive when you type some code into the editor, specifically when you add overload functions to partial classes. For example, you use code that resembles the following:

     Namespace N
{
   partial ref struct S
  {
  };

   ref struct S
   {
     void test();
     void test(int);
     void test(int, int);
   };
}

  • IntelliSense does not work in a source file that contains lambda expressions that have more than one return value. For example:

     [] () {
        bool b;
        std::wstring k;
        if(b)
        return k;
        else
        return k;
       };

  • When you use Intel's new TSX (Transactional Synchronization Extensions) through intrinsics provided by Visual Studio 2012 on Intel's Haswell hardware, the C++ compiler generates incorrect machine code. This causes the transaction operation to be non-exclusive.

  • C++ compiler generates incorrect function hints in the fixup record in PDB files.

  • When you create an empty Visual C++ project, the SDL checks option is cleared even though the SDL checks check box is selected in the Application wizard.

  • X64-based Visual C++ tool set does not contain all cumulative fixes for the x86-based Visual C++ tool set in Visual Studio 2012 updates.

Graphics Diagnostics

  • Assume that you have a Windows Phone or a Windows Store project that references a separate project that contains assets that are created by using Visual Studio Graphics tools. When you try to build the main project, the assets are not deployed together with the main project. This causes build errors in the Windows Store application or run time errors in the Windows Phone application.

Setup

  • When you try to install a Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 package that does not contain Entity Framework tools, you receive the following error message:

    "Entity Framework Designer for Visual Studio 2012 - enu package failed"

Test and Lab Manager

  • Assume that you have applied Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 on a computer that has TFS 2012 and Visual Studio 2012 installed. You try to run a build that contains tests on the computer. In this situation, the build fails together with a MethodNotFoundException exception.
  • Merged code coverage files display incorrect coverage data.

XAML Designer

 

The third-party products that this article discusses are manufactured by companies that are independent of Microsoft. Microsoft makes no warranty, implied or otherwise, about the performance or reliability of these products.

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