Microsoft Unveils Visual Studio Update 2 RC at Build Conference

by Darryl K. Taft

Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 includes all the tools you need for developing apps for Windows Phone 8 and Windows Phone 8.1.

The suite of tools in Visual Studio for Windows Store development can all be used during development, debugging and diagnostics for Windows Phone 8.1 projects. This includes key new diagnostics tools, such as the memory profiler and the combined UI responsiveness, energy consumption and CPU utilization can be used to profile your Windows Phone 8.1 universal apps.

Developers can create a project with heads for Windows and Windows Phone, or right-click to add a Windows or Windows Phone head to an existing application.

The Universal Projects enables a Shared project that can be compiled into both heads of an application. This Shared project is designed to maximize your ability to share code and assets between the app heads.

This update provides dozens of new features in TFS, including improvements to Git support, backlog management in TFS Web Access, support for tags throughout Visual Studio and improvements in lightweight charting.

An Incoming Changes Indicator has been added to the Code Lens feature. Code Lens provides information about a declaration in C# or VB source code directly at the point of attention, based on local information as well as source control data. This indicator highlights changes that are in upstream branches of your source control that will likely be merged into this code in the future.

Microsoft announced the release of TypeScript 1.0, the first officially complete version of its superset of JavaScript that is aimed at building enterprise-scale JavaScript applications.

Microsoft updated ASP.NET and Web Tools, including latest ASP.NET platform support, SCSS, LESS, JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) editor and more.

Microsoft updated the release management capabilities in the toolset, including extending tagging to release templates and server environment configuration. This slide shows Visual Studio Release Management 4 from the November 2013 launch.