Welcome to the new year and a new Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova (TACO) update! We just released Update 5 of the tools for you—full details are in the release notes—and we’ve created a new developer blog that you can follow to keep up to date with tips, tricks, and articles from our development team.
New in Visual Studio TACO Update 5
In Visual Studio 2015, you should see a prompt to download and install the new Visual Studio TACO Update 5 release.
The top changes in this release are:
- CLI interop. If you switch between the command line and Visual Studio, your changes reflected in both development environments.
- Node 5 / NPM 3 and Cordova 5.4.1 / 6 compatibility. Right now, NPM 3 does not work with Cordova versions 5.3.x and lower. In Update 5, if you are targeting a Cordova version older than 5.4.0 and you have NPM 3 or higher, we will fail your build and show you an error message with suggestions for fixing your build.
- Over 50 bug fixes. These address issues such as supporting the iOS 6s simulator, various Ripple deployment matters, and support for MySQL.
Read more from our developers, or go to the release notes for Update 5.
Keeping in touch with you!
In addition to building out our tools, we’ve also been working on a few new ways to connect you with members of our team—to help you master the tools and move past issues blocking you from completing your projects.
New developer blog. We’ve just released a new Visual Studio TACO Developer Blog to which we’ll share out regular topics from our engineering team – including tips, tricks, and “behind the scenes” topics.
Cordova Tools Live Stream. We’re also continuing the Cordova Tools Live stream that we announced last November. In the months ahead, we’ll continue to have regular question and answer sessions with the community. We’ll also be expanding to include a regular set of interviews and topics of interest to Cordova developers at large. Finally, you’ll see us step up the video and audio quality dramatically with the help of our friends at Channel 9.
Visual Studio TACO Newsletter. In order to keep you updated on all the new samples, tutorials, and guides we are coming out with, we have started a Visual Studio TACO Newsletter with helpful tips on the topics we find you all are asking about. Sign up here and look for the first issue in late January!
| Linda Zhong, Program Manager, Visual Studio Client Tools Team Linda is new to the Tools for Apache Cordova team, but not new to the trials and tribulations of sad documentation. She spends her time thinking about how to make the VS Cordova user experience really rock! |
| Jordan Matthiesen (@JMatthiesen) Jordan works at Microsoft on JavaScript tooling for web and mobile application developers. He’s been a developer for over 18 years, and currently focuses on talking to as many awesome mobile developers as possible. When not working on dev tools, you’ll find him enjoying quality time with his wife, 4 kids, 1 dog, 1 cat, and a cup of coffee. |
