Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 Released

Tip

To download for team sharing/network deployment, download web installer from the link, then at command prompt use the command: –

“<download path>\VS2012.2.exe” /Layout “<my save path>”

replacing <download path> and <my save path> as required…. This will download the full install (1.8GB).

The same also works for SSDT (SQL Server Data Tools) installers.

Download now from http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/downloads#d-visual-studio-2012-update or http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=273878

Very nice code mapping features during debug and error tracing, watch the video below (or at here – about 25 minutes into video) for details.

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Most of the following content has been extracted from http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/visual-studio-update#story-update-2

46 minutes, 36 seconds

New Features include

Agile planning

Visual Studio 2012 introduced a new set of capabilities to support agile teams—on their terms. Update 2 adds new capabilities for your team to customize and get more out of its agile tooling. You can now add customizable columns to your Kanban boards so that they more accurately reflect your organization’s structure. Work item tagging helps teams to manage their work items by adding tags to get more out of their data.

Quality enablement

Maintaining quality throughout the development cycle is one of the key focus areas for Visual Studio 2012. In Update 2, you can continue to drive quality wherever you are through web access for Test Case Management. You can author and execute test cases remotely, making it easier for all members of your team to participate in test case reviews. You can also profile your unit tests to create better code by tracking the end to end flow of your code, including the unit test itself.

Line-of-business (LOB) application development

With Update 2 we continue to invest in making it easier for you to develop LOB applications. You can quickly create SharePoint apps and HTML5 client apps using LightSwitch. Just design your app and let the LightSwitch templates provide the fit and finish so you can get your LOB applications running quickly. With the addition of WPF, Silverlight and SketchFlow to Blend for Visual Studio, now you have everything you need for designing and coding your desktop applications in Visual Studio.

Developer experience

When you spend a lot of time developing software, you want tools that will provide an enjoyable developer experience. Update 2 includes enhancements and updates to improve the developer experience for Visual Studio 2012. Code map debugger integration gives you a visual representation of your code while debugging so you can identify issues faster. You can also create great apps for Windows Store using profiling enhancements to find issues earlier that could impact your users.

Plus more… Full description of Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 can be viewed at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2797912

Additional downloads for Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 (Visual Studio 2012.2) are also available for:

• Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 with Update 2
• Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Express 2012 with Update 2
• Team Explorer Everywhere for TFS 2012 with Update 2
• IntelliTrace Collector for Visual Studio
• Remote Tools for Visual Studio 2012 Update 2
• C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2012 Update 1
• Agents for Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 Update 2
• Agents for Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 Language Pack

Meet the new ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 release…

ASP.NET tooling gets a little better, with updates to Page Inspector, IntelliSense, Publishing and the Editor; Along with a batch of updated project Templates. See: –

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Introduction-to-the-ASPNET-and-Web-Tools-20122-Release

for a short-ish (~25min) video on the details.

You can get the ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 installer at: –

http://asp.net/vnext

.NET Framework Documentation Improvements

“The CLR documentation team has been busy responding to feedback and making updates and changes to the .NET Framework documentation in the MSDN Library. We would like to tell you about the most recent set of document updates, which were published earlier in February.”

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2013/02/19/net-documentation-improvements.aspx

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) – Visual Studio 2012 Update 1

For anyone who has missed it and would like play, or would like the updated version the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Virtual Machine and Hands-on-Labs from the ALM team at Microsoft, who originally published the VM at the tail end of 2011 for VS 2010. They have updated it to Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 in Dec 2012…

Free download, and well worth looking at… really need to find more time myself to have a dig into this one 🙂

NOTE: you need access to Hyper-V to use this VM, it is x64 and a Hyper-V image so will not run under Microsoft Virtual Machine, as that is x86 only; will probably run under VM Virtualbox or others that support x64. See the ALM blog for full details…

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/briankel/archive/2011/09/16/visual-studio-11-application-lifecycle-management-virtual-machine-and-hands-on-labs-demo-scripts.aspx

This virtual machine and corresponding hands-on-labs / demo scripts have been upgraded to use Visual Studio 2012 Update 1. One new lab was added, focusing on diagnosing and testing SharePoint 2010 applications with the new ALM tools available in Visual Studio 2012 Update 1. All other labs were revised slightly based on Update 1, with two labs gaining new exercises which demonstrate Update 1 capabilities. New and updated labs are listed in the table below

…

New features in Visual Studio 2012:

• Agile Project Management in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012
• Building the Right Software – Generating Storyboards and Collecting Stakeholder Feedback with Visual Studio 2012
• Diagnosing Issues in Production with IntelliTrace and Visual Studio 2012
• Unit Testing, Code Coverage, and Code Clone Analysis with Visual Studio 2012 UPDATED for Update 1
• Making Developers More Productive with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012
• Exploratory Testing and Other Enhancements in Microsoft Test Manager 2012
• Introduction to PreEmptive Analytics
• Lab Management Improvements in Visual Studio 2012
• Testing and Debugging SharePoint 2010 Applications with Visual Studio 2012 NEW for Update 1

  

Labs upgraded from Visual Studio 2010:

• Authoring and Running Manual Tests using Microsoft Test Manager 2012
• Introduction to Test Planning with Microsoft Test Manager 2012
• Introduction to Test Case Management with Microsoft Test Manager 2012
• Introduction to Platform Testing with Microsoft Test Manager 2012
• Introduction to Coded UI Tests with Visual Studio Ultimate 2012
• Branching and Merging Visualization with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012
• Debugging with IntelliTrace using Visual Studio Ultimate 2012
• Using Code Analysis with Visual Studio 2012 to Improve Code Quality
• Understanding Class Coupling with Visual Studio Ultimate 2012
• Code Discovery using the Architecture Tools in Visual Studio Ultimate 2012 UPDATED for Update 1
• Using the Architecture Explorer in Visual Studio Ultimate 2012 to Analyze Your Code
• Introduction to Web Performance and Load Testing with Visual Studio Ultimate 2012