Today, we have released Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 CTP2, a go-live Team Foundation Server 2013 RC and TypeScript 1.0 RC. Coming shortly on the heels of Update 1, this update release preview includes several significant feature additions as well as fixes. You can see full details in the release notes.
Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 will include new features across many parts of our tools when it is released this Spring. With today's preview, we're making available a subset of these features to early adopters. This includes support for TypeScript, updates to web tooling, improvements in diagnostics tools, and even easier Azure integration for Web projects.
Today's updates also include the release of Team Foundation Server 2013 Update 2 RC, with improvements including additional Git support and work item tagging from Visual Studio.
TypeScript
Today's TypeScript 1.0 RC release marks an important step on the path to 1.0. We are also now adding TypeScript support into the Visual Studio 2013 product, starting with Update 2.
TypeScript has been a hit with developers both inside and outside Microsoft as it's developed toward 1.0 over the last 18 months. Optional static typing, rich IDE features, and support for classes and modules provide foundations for robust software development for JavaScript developers.
TypeScript is today being used to build products all over Microsoft, including Visual Studio Online, XBox Music and Video, parts of Bing, and the IE11 Developer Tools. Outside of Microsoft, TypeScript is being used in projects like Adobe's Digital Publishing Suite. The open source community around TypeScript has developed great projects like IDE support for TypeScript in Eclipse and the DefinitelyTyped repository of JavaScript library typings for all of the most popular JavaScript libraries.
Team Foundation Server 2013 Update 2 RC
Today's go-live release of Team Foundation Server 2013 Update 2 RC includes many updates that have been made available to Visual Studio Online users over the last few months. This includes improvements to Git support, backlog management in TFS Web Access, support for tags throughout Visual Studio, improvements in lightweight charting and CodeLens support for incoming change indicators.
We continue to add to the Git support in Visual Studio and TFS. Update 2 now supports the amending commits, pushing to multiple remotes and reverting a commit all within Visual Studio.
Work Item tagging has been a popular feature in TFS, and this update adds many of the most requested new capabilities for tagging, including querying on tags, editing tags from Visual Studio, and exporting tags to Excel.
TFS2013 introduced lightweight charting, and in Update 2 we are making charts easier to use by supporting pinning to the home page and customizing colors.
Details of the TFS 2013 Update 2 are available on Brian Harry's blog.
Web Tools
Today's update brings many new features in the Web developer tools, including SCSS support and improvements to LESS, an improved URL picker across all web tools, and updated ASP.NET templates which use the most recent platform releases from ASP.NET and Entity Framework. Full details on the web tooling features in this update on the web development blog.
One simple but important new feature is a full-featured JSON editor, including colorization, formatting and warnings.
We've also added JSON support to the debugger:
Azure
Update 2 makes it easier than ever to take advantage of Azure during development. In Update 2, we provide options to auto-create an Azure Web Site and SQL Azure database at project creation time for simple deployment to a development/testing environment. This is especially important for MSDN subscribers who have monthly credits for Azure as part of MSDN.
Diagnostics
Update 2 adds several new features to IntelliTrace, particularly around IntelliTrace performance events. SQL and MVC related performance events now provide access to richer actions for investigation, and performance events can be grouped so that it is easier to investigate specific issues. CodeMap is also now shown with IntelliTrace-specific annotations when debugging an exception from an IntelliTrace log file.
In Visual Studio 2013 we introduced several new diagnostics tools for Windows Store applications, including Energy Consumption analysis and a UI Responsive analysis. In Update 2, it is now possible to use a combination of these tools at the same time, and see combined diagnostics data on a shared timeline. This enables new insights on correlations between UI responsiveness, CPU utilization and power consumption.
Conclusion
There will be even more coming in Update 2 over the coming months, but today's CTP gives early adopters a chance to try out a handful of the new features. The RC releases of Team Foundation Server and TypeScript 1.0 are ready for developers today.
Namaste!