Microsoft makes the second preview of Visual Studio 2022 17.6 available

Microsoft has announced the availability of Visual Studio 2022 17.6 Preview 2. In this update, Microsoft has worked on lots of improvements to boost your productivity, streamline game development, improve .NET mobile development, and provide for better enterprise management.

Release notes

• Removal of integrated Edge Developer Tools for ASP.NET web workload

C++

• In the latest version of the CMake Debugger, you can now view the state of current defined targets and tests with their properties. You can also now view directories in the Locals window.
• You can now use the Create Member Function feature to quickly add constructors and equality operators to your classes. When you have a class with fields, three dots will appear under the class name, and hovering over them will display a screwdriver icon. The drop-down from the screwdriver icon will display the new member function suggestions. With this, you can add a default constructor, constructor with all fields, equality operator, and equality operator with all fields.
• HLSL (High Level Shading Language) is a DirectX-specific programming language used to create shaders in game development and rendering applications. The popular HLSL Tools extension by Tim Jones is now available as part of Visual Studio providing syntax highlighting, statement completion, go-to-definition, and more! To use HLSL Tools, please enable the component in the "Game development with C++" or "Game development with Unity" workload in the Visual Studio Installer.
• Improved performance for Go To and All In One Search for C++ Symbols.

Microsoft Teams Development Tools (Teams Toolkit)

• Add the feature flag "Teams App Configuration Improvements". The preview feature of Teams Toolkit enables developers to bring their existing internal and SaaS applications into Teams with Teams-native integration. In the teamsfxapp.yml file defines what Teams Toolkit engine does.
• Add the deep link to open Teams Toolkit directly from Teams developer portal. You can now open Teams projects in developer portal and edit in Teams Toolkit.

Debugging, Diagnostics and Profiling

Breakpoint Groups

• Visual Studio debugger now supports Breakpoint Groups,which can allow you to quickly and easily manage numerous breakpoints in organized groups.
• You can create a new breakpoint group using the "New" dropdown in breakpoints window. To add a breakpoint to an existing group, right-click the breakpoint and choose "Add to Breakpoint Group". You can also drag and drop the breakpoint into the desired group. These breakpoint groups can be enabled, disabled, and deleted. The breakpoints can be toggled individually or in combination as needed.

Memory Tool Insights Sparse Arrays

• Visual Studio Memory Analysis tool now has the ability to identify and display sparse arrays. You can see the list objects with sparse array under the Insights tab.
• A Sparse Array is an array that is mostly filled with zero elements, which can be inefficient in terms of performance and memory usage. The memory analysis tool will automatically detect these arrays and show you how much memory is being wasted due to these zero values.
• The debugger now supports the inclusion of .natstepfilter and .natjmc files within individual solutions, rather than the previous global location. This alteration allows for more efficient collaboration within teams, as these files can now be treated as any other file within a repository and shared accordingly.

Instrumentation tool

• The Visual Studio Instrumentation tool now supports C++ code, providing improved performance analysis. To access the instrumentation tool, go to Debug > Performance Profiler and select "Instrumentation" from the Profiler window that appears.
• The Instrumentation Data View presents a list of functions ordered by longest-running, making it easier to identify potential bottlenecks. Additionally, the Hot Path section displays the call stack for the functions that are consuming the most CPU, providing further insight into performance issues.

Profiler Live Graph for .NET on WSL

• The Visual Studio profiling tools now also support live graphs while collecting from dotnet-monitor for WSL. The WSL live metrics are available for .NET object allocation, CPU usage, and the .NET counter tool.
• While the tool is initially collecting data from dotnet-monitor for WSL you can see the real-time graphing for live counter information, then you can stop collecting and see detailed breakdown views of memory allocation, call trees, functions, collections, and other related data.

.NET Object Allocation tool

• The .NET Object Allocation tool now features the ability to import allocations from a .NET data provider using ETL file formats. For example, if you have an ETL file obtained from a .NET provider that contains allocation tick events, the tool can execute and display the allocations made within that data.

Git Tooling Enhancements

Stage and Commit During Build

You can now stage your changes and commit your staged items during a build. Committing directly is a risky operation since your files may change, but now you can stage them, verify your files are correct, and commit them - all while a build is running.

GitHub Issues and Azure DevOps Work Items - Improved Search

Improving on our Issues and Work Items integration in the commit message, you now get better search results when querying for items that you haven't updated recently or that aren't related to you but are part of your project or repo. The search works by matching complete strings in your items' names. This can help minimize copy-pasting item ids between the browser and Visual Studio.

Improved Merge Dialog

Updates to our Merge Dialog make it easier to understand how many files are being affected and warn you if there might be conflicts.

Git History Perf Improvements

Drastic improvements to our Git History window now load previous commits faster, allowing you to dig into your file and folder history quicker than before!

New Branch and Tag Naming Enhancements

Improvements to the New Branch and New Tag dialogs automatically replace spaces with dashes to avoid invalid characters in the name.

Enterprise Management

Host and Deploy Visual Studio layouts from your intranet

IT Administrators will now be able to host and deploy layouts on an intranet website in addition to a file share. Using an intranet location can simplify layout maintenance and improve installation performance, particularly for those organizations that currently use multiple global network file shares. The scenario is currently targeted for IT Administrators to remotely deploy from. Visit the feedback site to view guidance for how to enable this experience and let us know if there’s any functionality missing that you would need.

Limit exposure to available products in the Installer

We’ve updated the logic that controls what products are offered as available when you view the Visual Studio Installer’s “Available” tab. You should now have easy access to current Previews, as well as the ability to restrict exposure to certain products by disabling channels or using the new “HideAvailableTab” policy to disable the available tab altogether.

If you’re interested in trying out the new preview, just head over to the Visual Studio preview webpage and press Download Preview. There’s no need to worry about your existing stable Visual Studio installation as the preview will be installed side-by-side so you can swap between them.