Visual Studio 15.7: A great improvement for Xamarin

Finally a new version of Visual Studio is here and it seems great.

Visual Studio
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.

I really think you should update Visual Studio to the new version 15.7. The improvements around Xamarin are really impressive and very useful.You can read all about the new update here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/visualstudio/releasenotes/vs2017-relnotes