Showing category results for New Feature

The C++ Core Guidelines' Lifetime Profile, which is part of the C++ Core Guidelines, aims to detect lifetime problems, like dangling pointers and references, in C++ code. It uses the type information already present in the source along with some simple contracts between functions to detect defects at compile time with minimal annotation. These a...

Visual Studio 2019 Preview 1 introduces an improved debugger for C++ that uses an external 64-bit process for hosting its memory-intensive components. If you’ve experienced memory-related issues while debugging C++ applications before, these issues should now be largely resolved with Visual Studio 2019. Background One of the areas of feedback for...

Two features available in Visual Studio 2019 Preview 1 for C++ developers are the start window and a revamped new project dialog. The start window moves the core features from the Visual Studio Start Page, which normally appeared in the editor space when Visual Studio is launched, out into a separate window that appears before the IDE launches. The...

After reading and writing enough code, you begin to notice certain usage patterns. For example, if a stream is open, it will eventually be closed. More interestingly, if a string is used in the context of an if-statement, it will often be to check if the string is empty or if it has a certain size. You begin to identify and use these coding pattern...

C++ developers using Visual Studio 2019 16.0 Preview 1 or Visual Studio Code can now use Live Share. With Live Share you can share the full context of your code, enabling collaborative editing and debugging.  Collaborative Editing:   Collaborative Debugging:    In a Live Share session there is a host and a guest(s). The host of the session p...

Step Back for C++ In the most recent, 15.9, update to Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise Edition, we’ve added “Step Back” for C++ developers targeting Windows 10 Anniversary Update (1607) and later. With this feature, you can now return to a previous state while debugging without having to restart the entire process. It’s installed as part of the C++ w...

Many projects need to use additional tools during their build to generate sources for further compilation or perform other custom build tasks. VC projects have always supported Custom Build Tool integration, but it had some limitations. One of the popular requests on UserVoice is Allow custom build tools to run in parallel. Another problem is that ...

Why re-write the preprocessor? Recently, we published a blog post on C++ conformance completion. As mentioned in the blog post, the preprocessor in MSVC is currently getting an overhaul. We are doing this to improve its language conformance, address some of the longstanding bugs that were difficult to fix due to its design and improve its usabilit...

C++ developers using function templates and class templates can now take full advantage of IntelliSense within their template bodies. In Visual Studio 2017 15.8 Preview 3, when your caret is inside a template, a new UI element called a “Template Bar” appears next to the template definition. The Template Bar allows you to provide sample template arg...

At Microsoft, the core of our vision is “Any Developer, Any App, Any Platform” and we are committed to bringing you the most productive development tools and services to build your apps across all platforms. With this in mind, we are thrilled to announce today the availability of vcpkg on Linux and MacOS. This gives you immediate access to the vcpk...