Microsoft has made Visual Studio 2022 17.9 generally available, and introduced a preview of Visual Studio 2022 17.10. Visual Studio 17.9 adds AI-generated Git commits and enhances extensibility, while Visual Studio 17.10 brings AI-powered chat into the IDE.
Announced February 13, Visual Studio 17.9 can be downloaded from the Visual Studio website. The update features AI-generated Git commit messages using GitHub Copilot. Copilot analyzes the file changes of the commit, provides a summary, and suggests a descriptive message for each change, which you can insert or discard. Note that AI assistance in Visual Studio requires a subscription to GitHub Copilot.
Other productivity enhancements in Visual Studio 17.9 include the ability to open a GitHub or Azure DevOps pull request from either Visual Studio or a web browser, the ability to switch between single and multiple tab rows in Visual Studio’s document well, and the ability to open multiple types of debug visualizers simultaneously. Debug visualizers are now non-modal, so users now can interact with the editor while the visualizer window is active.
Managed Memory Insight tabs now can detect Event Handler Leaks, which can happen when one object subscribes to another’s events. And the Instrumentation tool has a new option that allows you to start and pause when profiling applications, allowing you to start the application under the profiler’s control without immediately collecting data.
For .NET and C# development, Visual Studio 17.9 introduces automatic deoptimization during debugging. By turning off the Just My Code option in the debugger settings, when you set breakpoints and step through your code, only the parts you stop at will be optimized, keeping the rest of the application running smoothly. Otherwise, beginning with .NET 8, the debugger automatically optimizes both release code and external code while debugging. Microsoft said this improvement brings benefits like fewer errors in the locals, watch, and immediate windows, and fewer unexpected code jumps during debugging.
HTML snippets now are available in Razor files, making it easier to write out common, repeating code patterns. Support has been added to scaffold views for Blazor projects, including CRUD (create, read, update, delete) using Entity Framework, and the Live Property Explorer now is supported with the .NET MAUI (Multi-platform App UI) framework, enabling developers to inspect XAML properties while debugging.
One day after releasing Visual Studio 17.9, Microsoft unveiled Visual Studio 17.10 Preview 1, which can be downloaded from the Visual Studio website. The preview makes GitHub Copilot Chat available within the IDE. GitHub Copilot Chat offers help with syntax, programming concepts, context-specific code, test cases, and debugging. Again, this capability requires a GitHub Copilot subscription.
Visual Studio 17.10 also introduces an easier way to manage a debugging workflow. By adding the Insert Conditional Breakpoint and Insert Tracepoint options, you can create breakpoints and trace points directly from expressions, thus allowing a more straightforward setup of breakpoints using property or field names alongside values.
Also in Visual Studio 17.10, a Hot Path to Root feature improves memory analysis by finding the most likely path to the root to calculate an object’s size. The Performance Profiler’s Instrumentation tool supports targeted profiling for any executable (.exe) file. The Attach to Process dialog has been enhanced to improve both functionality and the user experience. Support has been added for pinning CMake targets in C++ projects. And Build Insights now can be used to view template instantiation information.