Developers can now get their hands on the community technology preview of the upcoming version of Visual Studio Professional. Currently codenamed Visual Studio 14, the software is due for release sometime in 2015, but the preview version can be downloaded right now. The release features many of the changes and improvements that were mentioned at Build earlier in the year, including the “Roslyn” .NET compiler platform.
The aim of the release Visual Studio 14 CTP 1 (community technology preview) is to encourage early feedback from developers so that any necessary changes and additions can be made. This Microsoft advises those who download the software that this is a very early version of the next version of Visual Studio, and there will be a more comprehensive preview released later on in the year.
S. Somasegar, corporate Vice President of Microsoft’s Developer Division explains that “the C# and VB compilers and IDE support are fully built on the .NET Compiler Platform (“Roslyn”). This open-source compiler as a service now sits behind dozens of developer experiences in Visual Studio “14”, powering build, IntelliSense, refactoring, CodeLens, debugging and many more features developers use every day.”
There is something of a cloud focus to this release, including the ability to build cloud optimized web sites with ASP.NET vNext. New templates are included to allow developers to jump right in and try things out. Improvements have been made to C++, including the addition of support for user-defined literals, as well as new debugging and libraries features.
If you want to try out the preview for yourself, you can grab a copy from the download link below.
