📢 Visual Studio 2022 version 17.2 Preview 2 adds several new improvements

What's new and improved in Visual Studio 2022 version 17.2 Preview 2

C++

• Added inline parameter name and type hint support, toggled by pressing Alt+F1 or double-taping Ctrl. This behavior can be customized under Tools > Options > Text Editors > C/C++ > Experimental.
• Added IntelliSense support for C++23 features deducing this and if consteval.
• In 17.1 we introduced peripheral register and RTOS views for embedded developers. We are continuing to improve the capabilities of those views with usability improvements in 17.2:
  • The RTOS tool window is now hidden by default, this prevents showing a tool window with error messages that are not relevant when an RTOS is not being used.
  • When a user double clicks on an RTOS object in the tool window it adds a watch for the object.
  • When a user selects the stack pointer start/end values in the RTOS tool window it is opened in the memory window.
  • Thread awareness has been added for device targets for the call stack window.

Test tools

• Significant improvements across full functionality of Live Unit Testing are available under a preview feature flag including:
  • Supporting more solutions out-of-the-box than before
  • Better handling of large solutions
  • Better default behavior working with large test sets
  • Better cancellation abilities of test runs in progress
  • More configuration options with new Live Unit Testing wizard and Lutignore file
  • Enable this new Live Unit Testing build experience in Tools > Options > Environment > Preview Features and watch for more details on the Visual Studio blog.
• We are also previewing a more advanced test progress bar that includes more details on where the Test Explorer is in the test execution process with live updates.

.NET Productivity

• We now surface embedded source and Source Link as part of Go to Implementation if a referenced assembly has embedded source or Source Link. This allows you to navigate to the original source files that implement the target symbol.
• In .NET 7 we added a new attribute called the StringSyntaxAttribute which will allow you to tell us what kind of data a string represents such as JSON, Regex, or DateTime. We added support for this attribute so you will get syntax highlighting for the new StringSyntaxAttribute for JSON.
• We added a diagnostic message for the new JSON StringSyntaxAttribute when there is a misplaced string literal in an object literal to say that a colon is expected.
• We now have a refactoring that wraps a collection of initializers for both Visual Basic and C#.
• We now support embedded languages for the new C# 11 language feature raw string literals. To use raw string literals, set the language version in your project file to preview: <LangVersion>preview</LangVersion>.
• Background Code Analysis now has more configuration options in Tools > Options allowing you to set the diagnostic scope to None in-order to turn off Background Code Analysis.
• Code Cleanup now supports all code style options.

Razor (ASP.NET Core) Editor

• The new Razor editor now shows you the colors inline for text document colors.
• The new Razor editor now supports the ability to collapse regions.

Container tools

• You can now add Docker Compose container orchestration support to an Azure Functions project and debug it locally.
• We added .NET 7 support.

.NET Debugging with WSL

• Improved troubleshooting for configuration issues including an automated installation of WSL.

Service Fabric

• We added .NET 7 support.

SQL Server Data Tools

• Added support for column-level encryption in SQL projects targeting in Azure Synapse Analytics.

Web Tools

• Creation of new Azure Function projects is now fully integrated into the general New Project dialog allowing you to pick and configure Azure Function triggers without the need for an additional dialog. You also get the option to create a dockerfile as part of the project creation. When further configuration through Connected Services is needed, the experience navigates you there and guides you through the rest of the steps.
• You can now connect your application to PostgreSQL (Postgres - Official Image | Docker Hub), MongoDB (Mongo - Official Image | Docker Hub) and SQLite (Data Source=Sqllite.db) through the Connected Services experience
• Warnings coming from scaffolded coded and its non-nullable properties will be hidden by default by adding the property "Nullable" with the value "annotions" in the corresponding .csproj file.

General

• Improved proxy support by detecting when users are behind a proxy and proactively prompting for credentials when Visual Studio needs to access online resources

Git Tooling

• Improved interactive staging by adding support for staging individual lines of code right from the editor and the diff view.
• Enhanced the branch checkout experience, a.k.a branch switching by adding in more options and context for when there are un-committed changes.
• Enhanced the detached HEAD experience by providing the option to keep or discard commits when switching to a branch.
• Added an option to include license template when creating a new repository.

Microsoft Teams development tools

• The Microsoft Teams App project template has been improved and now creates configuration files consistent with the teamsfx CLI, including the .fx folder.
  • We recommend creating a new project using the updated template for any existing Teams Apps you've created with previous versions of the Teams Toolkit.
• We've removed account selection and automatic registration of Teams resources from the Microsoft Teams App project template.
  • You can now choose when to sign-in with your M365 identity and register app resources using the Project > Teams Toolkit > Configure Microsoft Teams App menu option.
  • Updates to the manifest.*.template.json files can be synchronized with Teams Developer Portal by selecting this menu item again at any time.
• You can now create and debug Bots for Microsoft Teams.
  • Create a new project using the Microsoft Teams App project template and select the Bot capability.
  • Use the Project > Teams Toolkit > Configure Microsoft Teams app menu to register the app and Bot.
• You can now create resources for Tabs and Bots in your Azure subscription.
  • Use the Project > Teams Toolkit > Provision in the Cloud menu to create resources in a subscription.
  • Use the Project > Teams Toolkit > Deploy to the Cloud menu to publish code to those resources.
• You can open remotely hosted resources in a browser that are created from the Provision menu using the Preview Teams app menu.

Debugging & Diagnostics

• We now support a new data visualizer to evaluate the IEnumerable interface implementations.
• IEnumerable visualizer will help explore larger collections objects in tabular view.