Mastering Visual Studio 2017

Kunal Chowdhury

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781787280656
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Microsoft Programming
• Index: Computer Science

A guide to mastering Visual Studio 2017About This Book• Focus on coding with the new, improved, and powerful tools of VS 2017• Master improved debugging and unit testing support capabilities• Accelerate cloud development with the built-in Azure toolsWho This Book Is For.NET Developers who would like to master the new features of VS 2017, and would like to delve into newer areas such as cloud computing, would benefit from this book. Basic knowledge of previous versions of Visual Studio is assumed.What You Will Learn• Learn what's new in the Visual Studio 2017 IDE, C# 7.0, and how it will help developers to improve their productivity• Learn the workloads and components of the new installation wizard and how to use the online and offline installer• Build stunning Windows apps using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Universal Windows Platform (UWP) tools• Get familiar with.NET Core and learn how to build apps targeting this new framework• Explore everything about NuGet packages• Debug and test your applications using Visual Studio 2017• Accelerate cloud development with Microsoft Azure• Integrate Visual Studio with most popular source control repositories, such as TFS and GitHubIn DetailVisual Studio 2017 is the all-new IDE released by Microsoft for developers, targeting Microsoft and other platforms to build stunning Windows and web apps. Learning how to effectively use this technology can enhance your productivity while simplifying your most common tasks, allowing you more time to focus on your project. With this book, you will learn not only what VS2017 offers, but also what it takes to put it to work for your projects.Visual Studio 2017 is packed with improvements that increase productivity, and this book will get you started with the new features introduced in Visual Studio 2017 IDE and C# 7.0. Next, you will learn to use XAML tools to build classic WPF apps, and UWP tools to build apps targeting Windows 10. Later, you will learn about.NET Core and then explore NuGet, the package manager for the Microsoft development platform. Then, you will familiarize yourself with the debugging and live unit testing techniques that comes with the IDE. Finally, you'll adapt Microsoft's implementation of cloud computing with Azure, and the Visual Studio integration with Source Control repositories.Style and approachThis comprehensive guide covers the advanced features of Visual Studio 2017, and communicates them through a practical approach to explore the underlying concepts of how, when, and why to use it.

What is New in Visual Studio 2017 IDE?

Visual Studio 2017 is the new IDE for developers released by Microsoft. It not only focuses on building applications targeting the Microsoft platform, but it can also be used to build applications using C++, Python, and so on. In short, it will be an IDE for every developer who needs to build apps on any platform.

Visual Studio 2017 will help you save time and effort for all the tasks that you want to do with your code, be it code navigation, refactoring, code fixes, debugging, IntelliSense, or unit testing of your module. Not only from the code perspective, but it will also streamline your real-time architectural dependency validation and provide stronger support for the integration of source code repositories, such as TFS (Team Foundation Server) or Git.

It comes with a brand new lightweight installation experience that modularizes the need to improve your efficiency of the fundamental tasks with a faster IDE access to a new way of viewing, editing, debugging, and testing your code.

Not only the common code editing features, but Visual Studio 2017 also comes with Xamarin, which will help you build mobile applications for Android, iOS, and Windows, more quickly and easily than ever. You can also choose the path to build mobile apps with Visual C++ or Apache Cordova, the cloud's first applications powered by Microsoft Azure.

In this chapter, we will cover the new installation experience, as well as the new features and enhancements that Microsoft has added to Visual Studio 2017. The following are the topics that we will discuss in this chapter:

• The new installation experience:
  • Overview of the new installation experience
  • Installation using the online installer
  • Creating an offline installer of Visual Studio 2017
  • Installing Visual Studio 2017 from the command line
  • Modifying your existing Visual Studio 2017 installation
  • Uninstalling Visual Studio 2017 installation
  • Signing in to Visual Studio 2017
• The new features and enhancements to the Visual Studio IDE:
  • Overview of the redesigned start page
  • The improved code navigation tool
  • Changes to Find All References of an instance
  • Structural guidelines
  • Editor config
  • The Roaming Extension Manager
  • Open folders in a convenient way
  • The Lightweight Solution Loading
  • The Connected Services
  • Acquiring tools and features by using the In-Product Acquisition
  • The Run to Click feature
  • Improved Attach to Process with process filtering
  • The new Exception Helper
  • Adding conditions to Exception Settings
  • Updates to the Diagnostic Tools

The new installation experience

In this section, we will discuss the various workloads and components of Visual Studio 2017's new installation experience. The basic installer that comes in the web-only mode allows you to select the components that you want to install before it downloads them. This saves you a lot of bandwidth. We will cover them here.

Unlike the previous versions of Visual Studio, you will not find an Offline Installer for Visual Studio 2017. You need to manually create it, which you can use to install Visual Studio 2017 without internet connectivity. This can be done by creating a layout using the web installer. Although the download size of the offline installer is big, it saves you the time and bandwidth when you want to install it on multiple devices.

In this section, we will learn how to configure and install different workloads or components using the online and offline installers. We will then continue to learn the ways to modify or uninstall the Visual Studio installation, as well as signing in to the IDE for a synced workspace setting across devices.

Before going into depth, let's see the system requirements to install Visual Studio 2017:

• Visual Studio 2017 will install and run on the following operating systems:
  • Windows 10 version 1507 or higher to build apps for Universal Windows Platform (UWP)
  • Windows Server 2016
  • Windows 8.1 (with Update 2919355)
  • Windows Server 2012 R2 (with Update 2919355)
  • Windows 7 SP1 (with the latest Windows Updates)
• Here's the hardware requirements:
  • 1.8 GHz or faster processor. It's recommended to have dual core or higher.
  • At least 2 GB of RAM, minimum 2.5 GB if running in a Virtual Machine. It's recommended to have 4 GB of RAM.
  • It's recommended to have 1 GB to 40 GB HDD space, based on the features you are going to install.
  • Visual Studio will work best at a resolution of WXGA (1366 by 768) or higher.

Overview of the new installation experience

The new version of the installer that is used to install Visual Studio 2017 allows you to control the individual workload/module that you need. Unlike the previous versions of the installer, it does not take more installation space; rather, it allows you to do a basic installation, having a few hundred MBs only for the core editor to install. On a need basis, you can select the workload or the individual module.

The Workloads screen will allow you to select the module that you want to install. If you want to build applications targeting Windows 10 only, you should go with Universal Windows Platform development. Consider the following screenshot:

If you want to build applications for Python or Node.js, the respective workloads are there to help you install the required components. Consider the following screenshot:

We will discuss more about the installation steps in the next point, where we will see how to install Visual Studio 2017 using the online installer.

Installation using the online installer

You can go to https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/ and select the V...