Fresh on the heels of Update 6, we are happy to announce the release of Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova Update 7 (version 60219.1).

What’s New?

In this update we have some new features as well as bug fixes. In this post I’ll share a little about some feature and bug fixes.

Consume structured error data from Cordova
You have told us that you need better error reporting. In update 7 we have attempted to addressed this and have taken an important first step towards improving this experience.

Starting with version 6.0.0, Cordova now emits error messages through a well-defined API which our tools consume. This vastly improves the error reporting experience. However, please note, you will get this new behavior only if you install VS TACO Update 7 and target Cordova 6.0.0 or higher. Any projects that continue to target older versions of the CLI, you will still get the old behavior.

This is a first step towards improving this experience. We do not expect the error messages to be perfect, but we hope that they are more useful than they’ve been in the past. If you see a non-actionable error message, please email us the build log and the list of errors in the output pane. Improving this experience is one of our highest priorities.

Cordova 6.0.0 as default version for new projects
By default, new projects are now created using the latest version: Cordova 6.0.0 . However, all your existing projects will not be upgraded, and are still supported by our tools.

Ionic Templates

New ionic projects for Blank, Tabs and SideMenu templates, are now available on the Visual Studio online gallery.

Updated Project Templates

All project templates have been updated to give them a modern look. A couple small issues in the templates have also been fixed, for example, some image assets have been changed and missing icons have been added.

Bug Fixes

Here are some top bug fixes in this update:

vs-tac install fails if AppData path has a space in it
We heard reports of failures instaling our node package with Update 6. We found the problem occurred when user names had a space in them. This is now fixed with this update. Thank you to those of you who reported the issue.

Reported Crashes
We’re starting to do a better job keeping up with our crash reporting system. We’ve fixed a number of bugs in this release. Check out the docs and guides for TACO to learn more.

Project name with spaces invalidates package.json file, breaks NPM
Adding NPM packages to a project with a name that doesn’t match NPM’s naming requirements was causing package restore to fail. We fixed this by adding “private”: “true” to the package.json.

Store packaging for multiple architectures only copies one package file to AppPackages directory
Create packages for the Windows store with multiple architectures at the same time is now possible.

To get a view into the entire list of features and bug fixes released in this update check out the resources on Visualstudio.com and docs and guides for TACO. Try out this update and share your feedback by emailing us or find us on twitter @vscordovatools. We are particularly interested in your feedback on error reporting.

Michael Braude, Development Manager, Tools for Apache Cordova Mike is the development manager of the Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova team. When he isn’t thinking about making VS TACO rock, he is appreciating the awesome puns that come out of building such a delicious product. Find him on twitter at @LittleWebFoot or reach him directly through email