Finally the new version of Visual Studio 2017 is here.
Visual Studio 2017
As usual let’s see the new features inside this releases and the changes for Xamarin:
You can now import and export an installation configuration file that specifies which workloads and components should be installed with an instance of Visual Studio.
We have improved the debugging experience for NuGet packages using the new symbol package format (.snupkg).
Step back in debugger is now available in C++ for Enterprise customers.
C++ IntelliSense now responds to changes in the remote environment for both CMake and MSBuild projects targeting Linux.
We have made updates to UWP Desktop Bridge framework packages and added support for ARM64 C++ Native Desktop scenarios.
We added support for the range-v3 library with the MSVC 15.9 compiler.
We fixed several bugs in the F# compiler and F# tools.
Language service support for new TypeScript features for semantic file renaming and project references.
Improved Node.js development by updating Vue.js templates and adding support for unit testing using the Jest framework.
We added SharePoint 2019 project templates, so you can migrate existing SharePoint 2013 and 2016 projects to SharePoint 2019.
Visual Studio Tools for Xamarin now supports Xcode 10.
We made improvements to the Xamarin.Android build performance.
We have added and improved features for Universal Windows Platform developers, including ARM64 support, the latest preview SDK, better debugging of Desktop Bridge applications, and XAML Designer improvements.
Substantial improvements were made to the experience of using authenticated package feeds.
There is now support for lock file to enable repeatable restore for PackageReference based projects.
We have added support for the new license format for NuGet packages.
We have introduced NuGet client policies in Visual Studio which enables you to lock down environments such that only trusted packages can be installed.
We made the use of .NET Core within Visual Studio more predictable.
and these are the bugs fixed in this version:
No way to change “Find All References” background color.
“Visual C++ Resource Editor Package” load failed.
VS2017 v15.8 Build does not start if XAML files are not manually saved first.
Scrolling up with the arrow key causes Visual Studio to page up.
After updating to 15.8.1, data tip does not show when debugging.
System.InvalidProgramException: Common Language Runtime detected an invalid program..
Solution Explorer does not remain pinned after closing Visual Studio.
Navigation bar in editor has trouble handling long method names.
Regarding Xamarin these are the most important changes in this release:
Visual Studio Tools for Xamarin
Visual Studio Tools for Xamarin now supports Xcode 10, which allows you to build and debug apps for iOS 12, tvOS 12, and watchOS 5. See how to get ready for iOS 12 and our introduction to iOS 12 for more details on the new features available.
Microsoft has now released a new update for Visual Studio 2019. Let see what news we are and if there are improvements for Xamarin (Yes, there are…Yes!!!!)
As usual I’ll copy here Microsoft Release notes (it’s quite long, so I’ll keep only the important part) and then we’ll see the improvements for Xamarin. I’ve added in bold the parts related to Xamarin.
Release Notes Visual Studio 2019 version 16.1
IDE
Visual Studio IntelliCode is now generally available and comes installed with any workload that supports C#, C++, TypeScipt/JavaScript, or XAML.
We have added Per-Monitor Awareness support.
New codefixes are available for C#.
Most Recently Used has been added to Visual Studio Search.
Performance
You can now experience optimizations to improve the solution load time of very large solutions.
Template authors can add custom tags to their templates.
There is now CodeLens support for custom UI.
We have provided updates to Language Server Protocol implementation.
We have updated behavior for switching between solutions, folders, and other views.
Use Windows Subsystem for Linux with C++ natively in Visual Studio, and AddressSanitizer for Linux projects and WSL.
We have made improvements and modified colorization in C++ Quick Info tooltips.
We have implemented new C++ Code Analysis quick fixes.
F#
We have released more performance improvements and a bulk of bug fixes for F# and F# tooling.
.NET
New .NET productivity features include one-click code cleanup on projects and solutions, a new toggle block comment keyboard shortcut, refactoring to move types to other namespaces.
You can now clone code from an SSH URI through the clone screen in the start window.
.NET Productivity additions in this release include intellisense completion for unimported types, toggling single-line comment/uncomment, exporting naming styles to editorconfig, and a new code style setting for preferring usings inside/outside namspaces.
We have implemented .NET SDK tooling additions primarily around supporting WinForms and WPF projects for .NET Core 3.0 along with bug fixes and performance improvements.
Visual Studio SDK v16.0 has been released to NuGet.
A preview of the XAML Designer for .NET Core 3.0 WPF development is available.
Xamarin
Default Android Experience for Xamarin now supports API 28.
Xamarin.Forms XAML recommendations for design time attributes.
Top Issues Fixed in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.1
Cannot navigate to the symbol under the caret in ASP.NET MVC Projects.
Resx editor doesn’t render.
Xamarin.iOS cannot find the application manifest. Please ensure the project contains a manifest file named ‘Info.plist”.
nmake environment missing path to NETFX tools.
Clicking on a ASP.NET Core project in solution opening the project .csproj file.
Assembly reference is removed from project after running app referencing library.
Details of What’s New in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.1
IDE
IntelliCode is now generally available and comes installed with any workload that supports C#, C++, TypeScipt/JavaScript, or XAML.
Use the start window to clone code from an online repository through SSH.
Clone with SSH on start window
Visual Studio IntelliCode is installed by default when you install a workload that supports C#, XAML, or C++.
C# and XAML base models will be on by default.
Preview features, such as custom model training and argument completion, can be enabled via Tools > Options > IntelliCode.
Added Per-Monitor Awareness support
New codefixes available for C#.
Added Per-Monitor Awareness support for WinForms based PropertyBrowser window of Visual Studio. Requires .NET Framework 4.8 RTM version installed on the machine.
Debugger
Source Link can now use Windows Authentication to support on-premises TFS Source Control.
Added nuget.org symbol server to the list of default symbol servers
Project
The button for switching the Solution Explorer view will now consistently show you a dropdown menu of all possible views.
Solution view switching
Improved the loading time for very large solutions. The improvement varies based on the size of the solutions.
Removed the Convert dialog under File > Convert. This feature was previously deprecated in Visual Studio 2015.
Updated the validation rules for the task.vs.json and launch.vs.json schemas, and added descriptions for the properties.
Added support for Linux remote debugging using a custom program via launch.vs.json.
Editor
Visual Studio Search will now display on focus the three most recently used actions invoked through Visual Studio Search, as shown in this sample mockup. (Note: icons and specific line items have not been fully updated in this mock-up.)
.NET Productivity
There is now experimental intellisense completion for unimported types! You now receive intellisense suggestions for types in dependencies in your project even if you have not yet added the import statement to your file. You must turn this option on in Tools > Options > Text Editor > C# > Intellisense.
Intellisense completion for unimported types
Toggle Single Line Comment/Uncomment is now available through the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+K,/). This command will add or remove a single line comment depending on whether your selection is already commented.
You can now export naming styles with the “Generate editorconfig” button located in Tools > Options > Text Editor > C# > Code Style.
You can now use a new editorconfig code style rule to require or prevent usings inside a namespace. This setting will also be exported when you use the “Generate editorconfig” button located in Tools > Options > Text Editor > C# > Code Style.
Editorconfig rule for usings outside/inside namespaces
Tools Options setting for usings inside/outside namespace
The Find All References “Kind” column now has more filter options and is aware of namespaces and types.
Find All References Kind column has more filter options
We have added a codefix for split/merge if statements.
Split or merge if statements
We have added a codefix for wrapping binary expressions.
Wrap binary expressions
A regex completion list can now be accessed through the intellisense menu (Ctrl + space) when inside a regex string. These completions also include an in-line description of what the suggestion does.
Regex completion
We have added a codefix for unsealing a class.
Unseal a class
You can now use one-click code cleanup for projects and solutions. You can right-click on projects or the solution in the Solution Explorer and select ‘Run Code Cleanup’.
Right-click to run code cleanup over the entire solution
You will see a dialog box while cleanup is applied to each file
You can now use a refactoring dialog to move type to namespace or folder. Place your cursor in the class name and type (Ctrl + .) to open the quick actions and refactorings menu and select ‘Move to namespace.’ This launches a dialog where you can select the target namespace you would like to move the type to.
Place cursor in class name and type (Ctrl+.) to view refactorings
Select the destination namespace
Toggle Block Comment/Uncomment is now available through the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+Shift+/) or through Edit > Advanced > Toggle Block Comment. This command will add or remove block comments depending on what you have selected.
Toggle block comment with (Ctrl+Shift+/)
There is now a codefix for making readonly struct fields writable. Place your cursor in the struct name, type (Ctrl+.) to open the quick actions and refactorings menu, and select ‘Make readonly fields writable.’
The codefix to add a private field from a constructor and vice versa is easier to discover and will show when any portion of the field name is selected. This refactoring now also offers all possible constructors.
XAML Designer Preview for .NET Core 3.0 WPF development
There is an early preview of the XAML Designer for developers building .NET Core 3.0 WPF applications in Visual Studio. Many design-time features will be unavailable at this time. Since this is an early preview, if you encounter issues such as crashes, please submit Visual Studio feedback for the team to improve the experience going forwards.
With each update to Visual Studio 2019, we will continue implementing more of the features that were previously available in the XAML Designer for .NET Framework WPF applications.
Xamarin
We have updated the default Android Experience to API 28 for templates, device creation, installers, and more.
IntelliSense on Windows now shows recommendations for design-time attributes when writing Xamarin.Forms XAML.
Changes related to Xamarin
As we have seen, there are 2 main changes. The first one is relative to Android, now everything is updated to API 28, so we should find updated Android templates.
The second change is relative to IntelliSense, now it should give us better recommendations when we write our Xamarin.Froms XAML files.
A very annoying bug has been fixed in Xamarin.iOS: Xamarin.iOS cannot find the application manifest. Please ensure the project contains a manifest file named ‘Info.plist”.
That was quite a bad bug and the only way to resolve it was to unload and reload the iOS project. Fortunately now Microsoft has fixed it so…..Yeahhh!
Are you going to update Visual Studio? I’m doing it right now!
Every release of Xamarin.Forms improves the performances and adds new features. It has been a long time since the first Xamarin.Forms came out. That version was very basic and to be honest not very great. Then Xamarin.Forms 2 came out and it was better, finally something that could be used for a production app. When Xamarin.Forms 3 came out, it was great, better performances, new features. Xamarin.Forms 3 has been a great tool to create amazing multiplatform apps and now Xamarin.Forms 4.0 promises even more, again better performances and new features. Let’s see together the main news of this release.
The Shell
Shell is a new way to create our apps. First of all it allows us to add easily flyouts and menus to our apps. It also adds the concept of URI navigation.
That’s great but what is even better is that it uses “fast renderers” (see later). To use the shell, on Visual Studio 2019 starting a new Xamarin.Forms app, you can select the Shell template. To get more info about Shell, you can use this documentation:
Android Fast Renderers were introduced in Xamarin.Forms 2.4 but disabled by default. The idea behind them is to reduce the number of views required to render a particular control. Honestly you could see improved performances so now they are enabled by default. This means that you will notice better perfomances with the enw Xamarin.Forms.
Image Source Unification
From Xamarin.Forms 3.5, they have introduced the FontImageSource to use the font glyphs but was not possible to use it everywhere. From version 4.0using ImageSource you can use them wherever you want.
Accessibility
From Xamarin Forms 4.0 we can now control the focus order directly in X.F. To do this, we can use the TabIndex property available on any VisualElement.
Conclusion
I will personally test Xamarin.Forms 4.0 and in particular the Shell to see how great that is. I will also test the new navigation pattern (URI Navigation) to see if there are improvements here. I will also evaluate the new performances to see if the app can be faster or more fluid.
If you are using the Syncfusion library together with Xamarin.Forms > 3.4 you should definitely continue to read.
Since the new release of Xamarin.Form 3.5, if you try to use the Syncfusion Listview (SfListView) in Release mode on Android, your app will crash.
In this moment there are two things that you can do:
Use a version of Xamarin.Forms < 3.5
Set the Linking to None (in this case your final APK will be bigger than usual).
Unless you are using some of the new features of Xamarin.Forms > 3.4, I’d suggest you to continue to use Xamarin.Forms 3.4 otherwise in you Android project, set the Linking to None and it will solve your problem.
I will update this post, as soon as Synfusion and Xamarin will solve this massive issue.
Finally a new version of Visual Studio is here and it seems great.
Visual Studio 2017
As usual let’s see the release note from the Visual Studio website.
Release Note:
We added support to change installation locations.
You can Save All your pending changes before you start your update.
The update dialog provides you even more details about your update during installation.
C# 7.3 is included in Visual Studio version 15.7.
We improved solution load time for C# and VB projects.
We made numerous updates to F# and its tools, with a focus on performance.
We reduced the time to enable IntelliSense for large .NET Core projects by 25%.
We made Quick Info improvements and new .NET refactorings like convert for-to-foreach and make private fields readonly.
We added the ability to publish ASP.NET Core applications to App Service Linux without containers.
Live Unit Testing works with embedded pdbs and supports projects that use reference assemblies.
The Test Explorer has more responsive icons during test runs.
C++ developers can use CodeLens for unit testing.
We added new rules enforcing items from the C++ Core Guidelines.
Debugging large solutions with /Debug:fastlink PDBs is more robust.
CMake integration supports CMake 3.11 and static analysis.
Python projects support type hints in IntelliSense, and a Run MyPy command has been added to look for typing errors in your code.
Conda environments are supported in Python projects.
We added a next version of our Python debugger based on the popular open source pydevd debugger.
TypeScript 2.8 is included in Visual Studio version 15.7.
We improved Kestrel HTTPs support during debugging.
We added support for JavaScript debugging with Microsoft Edge.
The Debugger supports VSTS and GitHub Authentication for Source Link.
IntelliTrace?s step-back debugging feature is supported for debugging .NET Core projects.
We added IntelliTrace support for taking snapshots on exceptions.
We removed the blocking modal dialog from branch checkouts in Git when a solution or project reload is not required.
There is an option to choose between OpenSSL and SChannel in Git.
You can create and associate Azure Key Vaults from within the Visual Studio IDE.
Visual Studio Tools for Xamarin can automatically install missing Android API levels required by Xamarin.Android projects.
The Xamarin.Forms XAML editor provides IntelliSense and quick fixes for conditional XAML.
We added support for Azure, UWP, and additional project types in Visual Studio Build Tools.
You can create build servers without installing all of Visual Studio.
The Windows 10 April 2018 Update SDK – Build 17134 is the default required SDK for the Universal Windows Platform development workload.
We added support for Visual State Management for all UWP apps and more.
We enabled automatic updates for sideloaded APPX packages.
You have new tools for migrating to NuGet PackageReference.
We added support for NuGet package signatures.
We added Service Fabric Tooling for the 6.2 Service Fabric release.
We updated Entity Framework Tools to work with the EF 6.2 runtime and to improve reverse engineering of existing databases.
And now let’s see the improvements around Xamarin:
Performance
In this release, we improved solution load time for C# and VB projects by an average of 20%.
Visual Studio Tools for Xamarin
This release includes Xamarin.Android 8.3 and Xamarin.iOS 11.10.
Automatic Android SDK Management
When a Xamarin.Android project is loaded, Visual Studio can determine if the Android API level used by the project is missing from your machine and automatically install it for you in the background. To enable this feature, go to Tools > Options > Xamarin > Android Settings > Auto Install Android SDKs.
Improved XAML IntelliSense
Xamarin.Forms developers using Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7 will notice a vastly improved IntelliSense experience
Automatic iOS Provisioning
We made iOS device provisioning for development easier. In Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7, there’s a streamlined experience to request a development certificate, generate a signing key, add a device in the Developer Center, and create a provisioning profile, all with a single button click. All the heavy lifting of provisioning an iOS device is handled for you in less than 30 seconds.
UPDATE 4/4/2018: Microsoft has released the version 15.6.5 for Visual Studio that adds support for XCode 9.3. You can read more here.
The current Xamarin tool for Visual Studio 15.6.4 is not compatible yet with Xcode 9.3 so if you update Xcode to this version, you will not be able to compile your iOS projects anymore.
Visual Studio 2017
In case you are still using the Xcode version 9.2, disable the auto update.
If your mac has already updated Xcode to the new version 9.3 and you need to compile your projects for Apple, then you need to uninstall Xcode 9.3, disable the auto update and install Xcode version 9.2.
Microsoft has released the version 15.6.3 of Visual Studio and it contains several fixes some of them for Xamarin.
Visual Studio 2017
Visual Studio 2017 15.6.3 – Release note
Esc key doesn’t close Peek Definition Window.
wpp.targets file execution not working after update to version 15.6.
Project loaded via File->Open->CMake throws exception and CMake cache is not generated..
Version 15.6 update crashes Xamarin code with NullReferenceException with next scenario.
XCode Tools installation fails after version 15.6 update.
Anaconda 5.0.0 Completion DB is not up to date and hitting refresh fails.
Cannot run NUnit tests after version 15.6.1 update.
Visual Studio 2017 fails to launch from the command line when launched using 8.3 file name path.
Version 15.6.0 breaks when VisualStudio\\Telemetry\\TurnOffSwitch is set to 0.
Visual Studio Community 2017 auto closes after version 15.6 update..
CMake generation never stops after version 15.6.1 update.
Opening a solution with tests, and clicking any toolbar item in Test Explorer causes VS to crash.
I have highlighted the two bugs for Xamarin that now have been fixed.Those bugs are quite annoying so, especially if you use Xamarin, it’s very important to update Visual Studio to the version 15.6.3 If you want to try the Visual Studio Preview Version, you can find it clicking here
Microsoft has released a preview version 15.7 of Visual Studio 2017.
Visual Studio 2017
There are few improvements around Xamarin so could be quite interesting to see the release notes.As it is a Preview release, you shouldn’t use if for production code.
Release Notes
Updates
IntelliTrace?s step-back debugging feature is now supported for debugging .NET Core projects.
Debugging large solutions with /Debug:fastlink PDBs is more robust.
Visual Studio Tools for Xamarin can now automatically install missing Android API levels required by Xamarin.Android projects.
We added a limited preview of a new Python debugger based on the popular open source pydevd debugger.
We have improved Kestrel HTTPs support during debugging.
The Windows 10 Insider Preview SDK Build 17110 can now be installed as an optional component with the Universal Windows Platform.
We added support for NuGet package signatures.
Bug Fixed
.NET Core failed due to dependency on Microsoft.VisualStudio.AspNetDiagnosticPack.Msi.
Update to Visual Studio 2017T15.4 generates multiple package errors.
Add Option to Disable format on paste for razor code in razor/cshtml files.
Visual Studio auto formatter breaks complex razor code.
This release includes Xamarin.iOS 11.10 and Xamarin.Android 8.3.
Automatic Android SDK Management
When a Xamarin.Android project is loaded, Visual Studio can now determine if the Android API level used by the project is missing from your machine and automatically install it for you in the background. To enable this feature, go to Tools > Options > Xamarin > Android Settings > Auto Install Android SDKs.
This release includes Xamarin.iOS 11.8 and Xamarin.Android 8.2.
Live XAML Previewing with the iOS Simulator
The Xamarin Live Player enables developers to continuously deploy, test, and debug their apps using just Visual Studio and an iOS or Android device. Visual Studio 2017 version 15.5 added support to enable developers to preview real-time XAML changes directly in the Android emulator without requiring a recompile or redeploy. This release brings this functionality to the Remoted iOS Simulator for Windows.
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