May 07, 2018  MSVC C++ 17 conformance. Visual Studio for Mac, version 7.5. Visual Studio 2017 wasn’t the only IDE to get an update. Today, we’re announcing Visual Studio for Mac version 7.5. This release includes bug fixes, performance improvements, and several new features.

• Visual Studio Code C++ For Mac
• Visual Studio Community For Mac

Installation

1. Download Visual Studio Code for macOS.
2. Double-click on the downloaded archive to expand the contents.
3. Drag Visual Studio Code.app to the Applications folder, making it available in the Launchpad.
4. Add VS Code to your Dock by right-clicking on the icon to bring up the context menu and choosing Options, Keep in Dock.

Launching from the command line

You can also run VS Code from the terminal by typing 'code' after adding it to the path:

• Launch VS Code.
• Open the Command Palette (⇧⌘P (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+P)) and type 'shell command' to find the Shell Command: Install 'code' command in PATH command.

• Restart the terminal for the new $PATH value to take effect. You'll be able to type 'code .' in any folder to start editing files in that folder.

Note: If you still have the old code alias in your .bash_profile (or equivalent) from an early VS Code version, remove it and replace it by executing the Shell Command: Install 'code' command in PATH command.

To manually add VS Code to your path, you can run the following commands:

Start a new terminal to pick up your .bash_profile changes.

Note: The leading slash is required to prevent $PATH from expanding during the concatenation. Remove the leading slash if you want to run the export command directly in a terminal.

Touch Bar support

Out of the box VS Code adds actions to navigate in editor history as well as the full Debug tool bar to control the debugger on your Touch Bar:

Mojave privacy protections

After upgrading to macOS Mojave version, you may see dialogs saying 'Visual Studio Code would like to access your {calendar/contacts/photos}.' This is due to the new privacy protections in Mojave and is not specific to VS Code. The same dialogs may be displayed when running other applications as well. The dialog is shown once for each type of personal data and it is fine to choose Don't Allow since VS Code does not need access to those folders. You can read a more detailed explanation in this blog post.

Updates

VS Code ships monthly releases and supports auto-update when a new release is available. If you're prompted by VS Code, accept the newest update and it will get installed (you won't need to do anything else to get the latest bits).

Visual Studio Code C++ For Mac

Note: You can disable auto-update if you prefer to update VS Code on your own schedule.

Preferences menu

You can configure VS Code through settings, color themes, and custom keybindings and you will often see mention of the File > Preferences menu group. On a macOS, the Preferences menu group is under Code, not File.

Next steps

Once you have installed VS Code, these topics will help you learn more about VS Code:

• Additional Components - Learn how to install Git, Node.js, TypeScript, and tools like Yeoman.
• User Interface - A quick orientation around VS Code.
• User/Workspace Settings - Learn how to configure VS Code to your preferences settings.

Common questions

Why do I see 'Visual Studio Code would like access to your calendar.'

If you are running macOS Mojave version, you may see dialogs saying 'Visual Studio Code would like to access your {calendar/contacts/photos}.' This is due to the new privacy protections in Mojave discussed above. It is fine to choose Don't Allow since VS Code does not need access to those folders.

Today we are announcing the release of Visual Studio for Mac version 7.6. Our focus with this release has been to improve product reliability in various areas, with a special focus on the code editing experience. We have also made several fixes that improve IDE performance. Finally, we’ve extended our support for Azure functions with the addition of new templates and the ability to publish your function to Azure from within the IDE.

This post highlights the major improvements in this release. To see the complete list of changes, check out the Visual Studio for Mac version 7.6 Release Notes. You can get started by downloading the new release or updating your existing install to the latest build available in the Stable channel.

Improving reliability of the Code Editor

We’ve focused our attention on improving the reliability of the code editor in Visual Studio for Mac and have addressed several issues with the code editor. In particular, we want to highlight the following fixes to issues many of you have reported:

• We fixed an issue where Quick Fix menu items don’t display if source analysis is disabled.
• We also addressed a widely reported issue where tooltips wouldn’t disappear.
• We fixed an issue where IntelliSense seems to fail, resulting in red “squiggles” continuing to hang around in the editor even though there were no errors.
• We improved IntelliSense for F# developers. There was an issue where you could not use “.” for autocompletion, but we’ve fixed this and various other F# IntelliSense issues.
• We made improvements to JavaScript syntax highlighting.

Improving performance of the IDE

One of the top reported bugs in previous releases has been performance issues in the editor. Having a fast and reliable code editor is a fundamental part of any IDE and an important part of any developer’s workflow, so we’ve made some improvements in this area:

• We improved tag-based classification for C# with PR #4740 by reusing existing Visual Studio for Windows code, which should improve typing performance in the editor.
• We now support no-op restore of NuGet packages when opening a solution. This change speeds up NuGet restores on solution load.

We’ve also added many more small fixes that improve startup time and reduce memory consumption of the IDE.

Richer support for Azure Functions

Azure functions are a great way to quickly get up and running with a serverless function in just a few minutes. With this release, we have introduced new templates for you to choose from when creating your Azure Functions project:

These new templates allow you to configure access rights, connection strings, and any other binding properties that are required to configure the function. For information on selecting a template, refer to the Available function templates guide.

Another major part of the Azure functions workflow that we are introducing with this release is publishing of functions from Visual Studio for Mac to the Azure Portal. To publish a function, simply right-click on the project name and select Publish > Publish to Azure. You’ll then be able to publish to an existing Azure App Service or use the publishing wizard to create a new one:

For information on publishing to Azure from Visual Studio for Mac, see the Publishing to Azure guide.

Visual Studio Community For Mac

Share your Feedback

Addressing reliability and performance issues in Visual Studio for Mac remains our top priority. Your feedback is extremely important to us and helps us prioritize the issues that are most impacting your workflow. There are several ways that you can reach out to us:

• Use the Report a Problem tool in Visual Studio for Mac.
  • We are enhancing the Report a Problem experience by allowing you to report a problem without leaving the IDE. You’ll have the ability to automatically include additional information, such as crash logs, that will help our Engineering team narrow down the root cause of your report more effectively. This will be introduced in an upcoming servicing release to 7.6 that will be available in the Stable channel within the next few weeks.
• You can track your issues on the Visual Studio Developer Community portal where you can ask questions and find answers.
• In addition to filing issues, you can also add your vote or comment on existing issues. This helps us assess the impact of the issue.