C++ Team Blog
The latest in C++, Visual Studio, VS Code, and vcpkg from the MSFT C++ team
Latest posts
MSVC ARM64 optimizations in Visual Studio 2022 17.8
Visual Studio 2022 17.8 has been released recently (download it here). While there is already a blog “Visual Studio 17.8 now available!” covering new features and improvements, we would like to share more information with you about what is new for the MSVC ARM64 backend in this blog. In the last couple of months, we have been improving code-generation for the auto-vectorizer so that it can generate Neon instructions for more cases. Also, we have optimized instruction selection for a few scalar code-generation scenarios, for example short circuit evaluation, comparison against immediate, and smarter immediate spli...
#include Diagnostics in Visual Studio
We’re excited to announce that the #include Diagnostics feature is now available in Visual Studio 2022 17.9 Preview 2. This new feature allows you to better understand the behavior of #include directives by providing detailed information on each directive’s references and build time. To begin utilizing this feature, activate #include diagnostics by performing a right-click in your editor to display the context menu. Then, navigate to the ‘Include Directives’ option and choose ‘Enable #include Diagnostics’. #include References The feature in Visual Studio allows you to analyze the usage of #include...
What’s New in the vcpkg 2023.12.12 Release
The 2023.12.12 release of the vcpkg package manager is available. This blog post summarizes changes from November 21st, 2023 to December 12th, 2023 for the Microsoft/vcpkg, Microsoft/vcpkg-tool, and Microsoft/vcpkg-docs GitHub repos. Some stats for this period: Feature changes Bug fixes Documentation changes Total ports available for tested triplets While vcpkg supports a much larger variety of target platforms and architectures, the list above is validated exhaustively to ensure updated ports don’t break...
What’s New for Makefile Tools in Visual Studio Code Release 0.8: Post-Configure Scripts and more…
The latest version 0.8 of Makefile Tools in Visual Studio Code has shipped and is now available. This release includes two new features: a setting to support adding post-configure scripts and settings to add argument support to parse into your pre- and post-configure scripts. This release also features several bug fixes and improvements, including one from our open-source community. Thank you all for your contributions to this extension! Post-Configure Scripts In your Visual Studio Code settings, you can now specify a post-configure script to run after your Makefile configure step. Once a post config...
Azure Networking Team reaches peak productivity with Visual Studio’s new remote Linux capabilities and improvements
Over the past couple of months, the Microsoft C++ team reached out to a series of customers voting on a suggestion ticket asking for Remote Linux Unit Testing support to better understand their full set of interactions and needs with CMake and Remote Linux scenarios in Visual Studio. After these discussions, we built out a backlog of work items to deliver on any pain points in their experiences. One of the customers we interviewed and worked closely with during the process was John Schultz, an Azure Networking software engineer. Our team helped John not only to be able to F5 run his CTest unit tests for Linux,...
Directly Edit Unreal Engine Projects in Visual Studio 2022
Introduction We are excited to announce that Visual Studio 2022 version 17.9 Preview 2 offers direct support for Unreal Engine projects. We would like to give a special thank you to the folks at Epic Games. Our on-going collaboration made this feature possible. In addition, this feature relies on the latest features of Unreal Engine 5.4. You will no longer need to generate a Visual Studio solution. Currently, whenever you are working with Unreal Engine projects in Visual Studio, you must generate a Visual Studio solution from within the Unreal Editor or using the Unreal Build Tool (UBT). However, this pro...
What’s New in the vcpkg 2023.11.20 Release
The 2023.11.20 release of the vcpkg package manager is available. This blog post summarizes changes from October 19th, 2023 to November 19th, 2023 for the Microsoft/vcpkg, Microsoft/vcpkg-tool, and Microsoft/vcpkg-docs GitHub repos. Some stats for this period: Key changes This vcpkg update includes some bugfixes, documentation improvements, as well as a new community triplet. Notable changes for this release are summarized below. Added mips64-linux community triplet A community contributor has added a mips64-linux community triplet. MIPS stands for Microprocessor w...
Functions View for Build Insights in Visual Studio 2022 17.8
Introduction We are excited to unveil a new feature in Build Insights for Visual Studio: Functions View! This feature is available in Visual Studio 2022 version 17.8. Functions View offers essential insights into functions and forceinlines within your codebases. Download Visual Studio 2022 17.8 We extend our sincere thanks thanks to the developer community, especially our game studio partners, for actively providing feedback. Your contributions are invaluable in shaping this new feature. For more details about Build Insights and to explore other features like Included Files and Include Tree Views, pleas...
Debug vcpkg portfiles in CMake script mode with Visual Studio Code
We recently announced support for debugging the CMake language using the VS Code CMake Tools extension. Now in version 1.16 of the extension, you can fine-tune the debugger configuration using a launch.json file. This enables debugging in CMake script mode in addition to the existing debugging of CMake project generation. CMake script mode is an alternative way of running CMake that does not generate a build system, but instead uses the CMake language as a general-purpose scripting language. While script mode is not widely used (although there are fun esoteric examples), it is the mechanism that powers vcpkg ...
