Differences between Visual Studio 2010 RC and RTM - visual-studio

I have been using the RC version of VS2010 for a while now. I wanted to know if anyone has a summary of what changed between the RC version and RTM?
I just loaded the RTM and noticed some small things different. I searched around but can't find anything around about it.
If there is nothing out there that lists these differences, can we start listing them here as you find them?

"No Intellisense with VS 2010 RC (and how to fix it)" is a blog post by Scott Gutherie about a couple of things that are different between RC and RTM. "Visual Studio 2010 Released" by Scott Hanselmann has a reference to a change between RC and RTM as well.
To be more specific in each:
First one references a blog post noting:
Why were the default options for
Intellisense turned off when I did a
fresh install of Visual Studio 2010
RC1?
The second one wasn't the right link, so I did change it, here's the key quote:
A little confusion about this in the
comments. Folks feel very strongly
about this stuff, understandably. Just
like color blindness, some people are
sensitive to this stuff and others
"can't see it." One person in the
blogs didn't like go for
"indiscernible" and showed a
screenshot. Here's the deal. If you
are running VS2010 RC, you don't have
this fix. This will be in the RTM.
Here's a 100% screenshot, followed by
the zoomed in version. The takeaway is
this. If you didn't like the rendering
before, you will now. This is/was some
subtle stuff, but it's indiscernible
in the RTM, so be happy! I took the
screenshot from a daily build, not the
actual RTM, which hasn't happened yet.
These aren't the only changes probably, but these were references to what I could easily find about it so I'm trying to give a useful answer here.

Related

Do I need ReSharper for Visual Studio 2015/2017

I saw a lot of good comments about ReSharper. So I gave it a try and I really like it. I even suggested to my team to use it and to put some money in this tool. But they sad "We better put the money in updating Visual Studio because newer versions come with almost all ReSharper features" as we are using Visual Studio 2010.
Is ReSharper useless in Visual Studio 2015 or 2017?
This might not be an answer, just my own opinion.
VS2017 is doing very well without R#. however, some important functions are still not there in VS2017, e.g. renaming namespaces, and here R# role arises.
Some where else, I find R# make the things bad, for example, I don't like how the R# renames the properties, it gives and new popup window, where VS2017 renames it immediately.
So what I mean, sometimes R# might be useful, but if you are not using it, you are absolutely safe and productive.
I am still waiting for any video or article where it is described, what are the flagship killers functions in R# which VS2017 doesn't have (except renaming namespaces ;)).
UPDATE:
What I actually suggest is, install use the refactoring suggestions of R# because they are awesome, but keep the default key mapping of VS2017.**
UPEATE 2:
I have been working for 1 year without resharper, and I am very ok and do not miss any function, except renaming namespaces.
UPDATE 3:
I miss the function of extracting a method to an existing interface in Visual Studio 2017, which already exists in ReSharper.
ReSharper is not useless in newer versions of Visual Studio, but there are a lot of features and shortcuts that come baked right into VS. My opinion would be that if you are new to developing in VS, look into the features it already has and make the best use of them. After all, what good is a Porsche if you cant drive? Here are a couple of links you should check out.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/da5kh0wa.aspx
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms366750(v=vs.90).aspx

Can I change VS 2013 look & feel to be like 2010?

Just installed VS 2013 (was previously on 2010) and I deeply regret it. I'm so glad the company picked up the tab!
I've read around a bit and found that a lot of people hate the VS 2012/2013 look & feel, and there are tools and tips to bring back the 2010 look & feel in VS 2012. However I couldn't find something like that for 2013 and wondering if I missed it or it just wasn't invented yet.
Edit: Two things I did find which someone else might be interested in too:
Disabling the ALL CAPS menus (this is is another SO question and found easily)
Disabling the file contents expanding (this appears to be less known and god knows how this guy even found it...
Edit #2: In the end I didn't use the themes in the provided answer. It seems that the "close to 2010" theme comes built-in in 2013 under the "Blue" name. I decided not to bother with icons and colors beyond that, to try and get used to these icons. The hacks above, coupled with VSCommands proved sufficient for me.
Here's a great tool for customizing your VS UI. It works with 2012 or 2013. There's also quite a few different themes available around the web, some of which mimic the UI of 2010.
Visual Studio 2012 Color Theme Editor

Accessing the VS2010 version of the Microsoft.VisualStudio.VCProjectEngine assembly in VS2012

My company recently created a Visual Studio 2010 add-in that allows us to create LINT files from any given visual studio project from 2010, 2008 and 2005. We now want to get this same add-in to work in Visual Studio 2012, because we know that many of our customers will be using this in the near future, if not already.
We thought that it should be a simple "switch-in", and that the same code should work for both, but lo and behold, the VS10 add-in didn't work in VS12. So I copied the code (absolutely no changes) into a VS12 add-in, and surprise surpise, it did work. Naturally, we do not want to have two versions of the same code; bad for readability, bad for maintainability, so we still want to find a way to get the VS10 add-in to work in VS12.
I think the problem lies in the Microsoft.VisualStudio.VCProjectEngine assembly. This is interpreted differently in VS12 to how it was in VS10, meaning that when VS12 reads the add-in, it doesn't do what we want it to do.
I have done some research into this problem, and many people suggest creating a work around by using reflection, but I am reasonably new to this concept and don't feel confident enough to try it and risk seriously ruining the add-in.
So my question is this: Is there a nice and easy way of being able to read the VS10 version of the Microsoft.VisualStudio.VCProjectEngine into VS12?
Much appreciated :)
I later found an answer to this question and realised it hadn't been confirmed on the thread.
The answer indeed lies in the VCProjectEngine assembly. For some reason, this is a different module in Visual Studio 2010 to the module (with the same name) in Visual Studio 2012, which means any code requiring the module when written in VS2012 will not work in VS2010 and visa-versa.
It's a pain, because it means we have two lots of exactly the same code, but that is the way it has to be.

What is Visual Studio 2010 going to look like?

I have heard several podcasters (most recently the guys on DotNetRocks) say that the look and feel of Visual Studio 2010 has been completely redesigned and Visual Studio rewritten in WPF.
I have been watching some demos on channel9 of the Visual Studio 2010 CTP and the only thing that looks different to me is the opening screen.
I read the notice on MSDN, but it doesn't say anything about the look/design of Visual Studio.
Has Microsoft reversed direction on this or are there going to be major changes made to UI of the final product?
I'm guessing 3D with a space theme. You'll be able to "fly through" your code, "orbiting" classes, "shooting down" bugs and "launching" your code.
It's way too soon to make guesses about what it will look like: I don't even think that they know what it will look like.
However, from what I've heard, they are in fact rewriting portions to be WPF/C#, but they are not throwing everything out and starting from scratch. Instead, they will be rewriting portions as it makes sense. For example, I saw that they have some new UML tools that definitely look to be done in WPF.
Uh, the beta has been available for over a month. I have been playing with Visual Studio 2010 on and off. It is very similar to 2008 in overall design.
You can download it here and see for yourself where they are taking the product:
Download Page at Microsoft.com
There are a metic ton of videos on Channel9 about VS2010, TFS 2010 and then the PDC 2008 sessions online as well. They are also starting a new series called 10-4 dedicated just to VS2010 - a walk through of sorts.
Let's pray that they don't dink with anything, visually. My #1 guess is that they'll try and wrap the new office ribbon bar around our necks. ;|
I've heard that its going to have a historical debugger.
Also- this should prob be a wiki
From WPF Wonderland:
Visual Studio 2010 gets WPF facelift
WPF has been out for a couple years. That’s long enough that new releases of Microsoft products are sprouting WPF interfaces.
Last year at PDC Microsoft announced that the code editor in Visual Studio would be re-written in WPF. Microsoft didn’t stop at the code editor though. Today Jason Zander, GM for Visual Studio, revealed the new WPF based IDE.
Highlights from the PDC Keynote #1 on Day 2 (see: PDC website)
Multi-monitor support for the IDE via
WPF.
Building classes from test classes.
Toggle TFS bugs over a code segment
in Debug mode.
Partial config files for debug,
release.
WYSIWYG Silverlight Designer.

Visual Studio 2005 - 'Updating IntelliSense' hang-up

I am having trouble with my Visual Studio 2005 IntelliSense for some time now.
It used to work fine, but for some reason the 'Updating IntelliSense...' does no longer seem to be able to complete for the solution I'm working on currenly- it simply gets stuck somewhere at about 3-bars of progress and blocks one of my precious CPUs for eternity.
Deleting the .ncb file of my solution and performing a full 'Clean' afterwards was no help.
The 'Update' simply gets stuck again.
The project I'm working on is a fairly large C++ solution with 50+ projects, quite a few template classes (even more lately) and in general quite complex. I have no idea which impact this might have on the IntelliSense.
Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 and all hotfixes which rely on it are not
installed (we hade huge problems with this one, so we haven't migrated yet).
Any answer is very much appreciated on this one. Gives me the creeps..
Cheers,
\Bjoern
Rename "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\vcpackages\feacp.dll" to something else (like "feacp.bak") to disable Intellisense.
I recommend getting Visual Assist X to make up for it (it also has a number of other useful features as well).
I have found that the best fix for Intellisense in VS2005 is to install SP1, and then this hotfix: 947315. It has the added benefit of fixing most of the multi-core build issues.
This hotfix also includes the ability to control Intellisense via Macros. More information here.
As for making SP1 more friendly for existing code, you might also check out this hotfix for template compilation: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930198
Intellsense is problematic. Very problematic. When it works, it's great, but more often than not it will cause more problems than it's worth. It will hang up, it will parse through files while you are trying to compile code and will generally make VC 2005 sometimes run like a dog. As a previous poster suggested, disable intellisense (and chose a potential alternative -- I also support VAX).
Supposedly the hotfix and SP1 provided by MS will fix some intellisense problems, but not all. We have seen minimal help from these where I work. You are better off to disable it and rely on something else.
My feeling is that the slowness comes from the size of the projects. Yours seems like it might fall into that case.
Here is the only solution that works for me.

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