Visual Studio 2015 Update 2

30 March 2016. Today at Build 2016 Microsoft released the final version of Visual Studio 2015 Update 2. This release includes everything we shared in the Visual Studio 2015 Update 2 CTP release, as well as Visual Studio 2015 Update 2 RC.

Visual Studio 2015 Update 2 has focused on improving performance and reliability and addressing your feedback. Some key scenarios where we have improved performance and responsiveness include time for Visual Studio to start when extensions are installed, time it takes to shut down Visual Studio, NuGet performance, opening Team Explorer to browse work item queries within Visual Studio, and working in Visual Studio while experiencing network connectivity issues. If you look in the release notes, you’ll see a complete list of improvements to performance and reliability.

Microsoft have also added a handful of key features. A few that I’d like to highlight are:

• Extension auto-update now supports many more extension types. With this feature you no longer have to manually update your extensions, but you still have full control over your extensions under Tools>Options.
• Improvements to git support including new git commands (reset), large file storage, and a flag in the status bar to show the git branch status.
• Universal Windows Platform Tools enable you to select both the version of Windows SDK to target as well as the minimum OS version on which your app should be available. Additionally, you can now debug background tasks, and cache your application name and package configuration to reuse without signing in.
• Developer Analytics Tools, formerly known as Application Insights Tools, have updates to the search experience making it easier to go back and forward in history and search related telemetry. With these tools, you can now easily add Application Insights in your web apps and HockeyApp in your mobile apps. We have also streamlined the experience to configure collection of traces from logging frameworks like log4net, NLog, and System.Diagnostics.
• Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.2.3 provides editing, IntelliSense, debugging, profiling, and Azure functionality for Python, and this update now supports template IntelliSense and debugging for the latest versions of Django.
• Node.js Tools 1.2 Alpha supports Node.js v6.x, has improved support for ES6 IntelliSense engine including support for NPM packages, JsDoc comments, and has fixes in place for increased stability, performance, and improved reliability while debugging.
• Azure SDK 2.9 has additional support for secondary App Services and also includes some bug fixes. For details on the download and documentation take a look at Azure Developer Tools page.
• Visual Studio Designer for Microsoft Band allows you to create tiles for Microsoft Band. Drag and drop elements into a visual layout of a Microsoft Band and generate code easily, for C# developers. Visit http://developer.microsoftband.com/ for more information.