Visual Studio 2019 Roadmap

With the release of Visual Studio 2019 version 16.11, we are no longer adding new features to Visual Studio 2019. To see the high-level view of what we have planned for Visual Studio 2022, see our Visual Studio 2022 Roadmap.

Items in each section are sorted by current status and include the following icons:

• No icon - Planned
• - In Progress
• - Completed

Core

Visual Studio Core continues to focus on a theme of productivity enhancement and cloud integration. This period we are working on these items:

• Provide a one unified Git experience for all Visual Studio users regardless of their git provider
  • Remove Git v2 package from Visual Studio setup
• New Git experience focused on discoverability and usability
  • Users of source control see their status reflected in glyphs in Solution Explorer
• Search and navigate code within and across large repositories
  • Get Quick Find results with the same speed and performance of the Find in Files dialog
• Navigate, filter, and search for Developer Community tickets more easily
• Improve support for enterprise networks using conditional access
• Open and work with large solutions rapidly
• Build and debug cloud native apps
  • .NET Core developers can leverage WSL2 Debugging (GA) in VS2019 16.9

LiveShare

LiveShare is adding support for more Visual Studio tools during collaborative sessions:

• Developers can use an integrated terminal during a LiveShare session
• Developers can use Git Explorer during a LiveShare session

IntelliCode

IntelliCode suggestions continues to focus on productivity improvements when making multiple similar edits in your code:

• IntelliCode allows developers to complete repeated edits directly in the IntelliSense completion list
• Developers can locate and accept similar edits faster with new manual keybindings for IntelliCode suggestions

C++

This period we are continuing to focus on language conformance and CMake development for C++ users:

• C++20 conformance: C++20 language & library features in compiler, libs & IDE
  • C++20 constexpr standard conformance feature complete in MSVC
  • C++20 Modules standard feature support in MSVC Code Analysis
  • C++20 Standard Library features in MSVC STL. For a full list, please refer to the STL Changelog on GitHub
  • Ranges for C++20 standard library in MSVC STL
• Ease CMake development with Visual Studio
  • Leverage IntelliSense in CMake projects targeting Android or embedded
  • Support CMakePresets.json in Visual Studio
• Target multiple platforms (Windows/Linux) from the comfort of a single IDE instance
  • Verify host key fingerprint when connecting to a remote SSH server
• C++ OpenMP Conformance
• C17 conformance

Diagnostics

We continue to improve diagnostics capabilities in Visual Studio. This period we are focusing on debugging .Net Core apps on Linux, improved production issue analysis, and improved inner-loop diagnostics:

• Collect and analyze data from production services to resolve common problems
  • .NET Core finalizer queue auto analysis
  • Use the Auto Analyzer to detect deadlocks in memory dumps
  • Analyze the finalizer queue in a memory dump with improved heuristics
  • Enable diagnostic analysis over Linux core dumps
  • Quickly analyze a memory dump for all exceptions on the heap
  • Quickly analyze dumps for high usage regular expressions
  • Quickly analyze dumps with Out of Memory exceptions
  • Quickly analyze dumps with Stack Overflow Exception
• Analyze ASP.NET Core performance traces in seconds
  • Dynamic instrumentation profiling for .NET Core
  • Flamechart for visualizing CPU traces
  • Improve calltree building time for .NET Alloc tool by 25% of current
• Diagnose issues in .NET Core apps running on Linux
  • 'Pinnable Properties' for cross platform .NET Core debugging
  • .NET memory allocation tool for .NET Core on Linux
• Debug apps using App Services for Linux, ARM64 .NET Core on Linux and .NET 5
  • Debugging support for .NET 5 single file executables
  • Developers using .NET 5 have the debugger features they expect

.NET

The .NET team’s core theme this period is support for .NET 5. We also continue to focus on productivity and cloud environment integration.

For the full .NET roadmap, see .NET Release Schedule on GitHub.

For the EntityFramework roadmap, see EF Core releases and planning.

For the ML.Net roadmap, see ML.NET roadmap on GitHub.

For other .NET themes, see Themes of .NET on themesof.net.

• Be more productive with code assistance capabilities built-in
  • Automatically add missing using directives when pasting code
  • Build an EditorConfig UI
  • Improve navigation for metadata references
  • IntelliSense insert full method call
  • Moving code renames namespaces automatically
  • Remove Unused References in Projects and Solutions
  • Smart Break Line when pressing Shift+Enter commits current completion
  • Adjust Namespace at Project and Solution Level
• Windows Forms .NET 5 applications have full designer experience
  • WinForms VB .NET 5 applications have designer experience
  • Enable data-related experiences
  • New WinForms designer has good performance
  • Use Resources
  • Use Inherited dialogs
• Project Integration tooling for .NET Core projects works well for Visual Studio when it is connected to a Cloud Environment
  • I can edit resx files using designers beyond String Types
  • I can load and edit .NET Core projects in a connected Cloud Environment
• Use improvements in Projects
  • Package references support in C++ CLI
  • Add support for file nesting in all project types
• Use built-in productive capabilities for common development tasks
  • Moving IDE analyzers to NuGet package for CI support
• .NET 5 Theme - Enable Power Platform citizen developers with the ability to extend Power Platform apps using .NET Core and Azure services
• Runtime Improvements
• Project File modifications

Setup and Deployment

The main focus of Setup and Deployment is to facilitate the ability for Enterprises to stay secure by easily deploying updates in managed enterprise environments.

• Enterprises can successfully deploy security updates to Visual Studio 2017 and 2019 across their organizations via WSUS/SCCM

Web Tools

• Azure Tooling in Visual Studio
  • Azure Spring cloud - Steeltoe publishing experience in VS

Xamarin

• Comprehensive set of xplat controls
  • CarouselView GA
  • SwipeView GA
• Improve inner-dev-loop of build and deploy
  • Improved Fast Deployment
  • Remove the Shared Runtime
• Build on all mobile platforms faster with Hot Restart
  • Hot Restart is out of preview and enabled by default
• Comprehensive set of xplat gestures
• Support the latest Xcode APIs and features
• Add dual-screen layouts and APIs
• Use the latest Android SDKs by default
• Developers can bind Swift libraries/frameworks
• Increase xplat capabilities in Xamarin Essentials
• Xamarin developers improve their experience using .NET 5

XAML

This period XAML will focus on productivity tooling that improves iteration time for XAML applications:

• Create XAML apps productively
  • Deliver a complete designtools extensibility model after addressing major feedback from controls vendors
  • Reduce Visual Studio install size for Windows workloads that require packaging tooling
  • Designer Suggested Actions Experience (Designer Light Bulb)
  • Improve XAML Binding authoring Experience
  • Improved productivity for authoring XAML in the XAML Editor
  • Text Template Transformation Toolkit (T4) can use the .NET Core Runtime
  • Users should be able to populate empty controls with Sample Data
• Rapidly iterate on XAML with Hot Reload Xamarin.Forms
  • Selection Mode Support from Live Visual Tree for Xamarin Forms Mobile