Mega Microsoft dev tools update includes Clang codegen for Windows

Microsoft has released Visual Studio 2015 Update 1 with a ton of new features, including an option to build Windows dynamic libraries with the open source Clang compiler.

The developer team at Microsoft has been in overdrive these last few years, coping with the challenge of keeping up with the company's ever-changing platform strategy while also maintaining support for its existing runtimes, languages and frameworks.

Microsoft's mantra today is any device, any platform, which is why Visual Studio comes with toolkits for iOS and Android as well as Windows.

At the same time, it is sticking to its Universal Windows Platform effort, an evolution of the Metro personality in Windows 8, now extended to other device types including Windows Phone, Xbox One and Raspberry Pi.

Next there is the web development platform, ASP.NET, for which version 5.0 is in preview, with full release expected early in 2016. This runs optionally on .NET Core, an open source fork of the .NET Framework which is also consuming substantial development effort.

Another key piece in Microsoft's developer story is the cloud platform, including not just Azure and its myriad services, but also Office 365.

Visual Studio 2015 is the tool that has to bring all this together, which it does remarkably well considering its scope.

Now we have Update 1, with plenty of new stuff including a fix for a trivial annoyance: a revised icon that distinguishes it from that for Visual Studio 2013. Another annoyance that Microsoft says is fixed is the IDE's insistence on regularly phoning home to activate, for those on subscription.

"The IDE stays unlocked for a year or more after signing in as long as you have regular access to the internet," said Director of Program Management John Montgomery.

It would be tedious to list everything in this update; you can read the release notes here though they are not comprehensive. What follows is a quick summary of some of the changes.

Visual C++ in this update supports building Windows static or dynamic libraries using the Clang open source compiler, as reported here. Clang was previously included only for Android development.

On the mobile side, Microsoft has added partial Android 6 "Marshmallow" support to its Tools for Apache Cordova, for HTML and JavaScript apps. There is also a plug-in for Azure Active Directory authentication.

Visual C# has restored the C# Interactive window first seen in previews for Roslyn, the .NET Compiler Platform. You can try out code snippets on the fly.

New editor features include syntax highlighting and IntelliSense (code completion, etc.) for more languages, including Go, Java, Perl, Ruby and Apple's Swift.

Microsoft's Apps for Office and SharePoint have been renamed as Office and SharePoint add-ins. A preview of the next version includes SharePoint 2016 support and a new project type which adds command buttons to the Outlook ribbon toolbar.

Universal Windows Platform developers get the addition of behaviors to the version of XAML used for creating a user interface in these apps. Behaviors let you add interactivity declaratively rather than by writing code.

Testing in Visual Studio is improved in this update, with parallel test execution to speed unit tests, and support for both test and code coverage in ASP.NET 5.0.

Developers using Visual Studio's code analysis tools, which raise warnings for code that does not match various rules and style guidelines, found that the quantity of issues reported could be overwhelming. A new feature lets you suppress code analysis warnings so that they only appear for new code.

Visual Studio 2015 is a huge product, but despite bloat and occasional instability it remains a key asset for Microsoft as it struggles both to keep and attract developers to its various platforms.®