Visual Studio 2015 Preview has been released with support for cross platform device development in C++ in addition to an Android emulator, updated tooling for Apache Cordova, the open source .NET compiler platform, support for ASP.NET 5. The preview also includes many new updates and improvements.
Visual Studio 2015 adds support for cross-platform mobile development using C++ leveraging the open source Clang and LLVM toolchain. It enables developers to share, reuse, build, deploy and debug libraries for other operating systems in Visual Studio.
With the help of Visual Studio 2015 Preview, you will be able to create projects from templates for Android Native Activity apps or for shared code libraries that you can use on multiple platforms and in Xamarin hybrid apps. It is also possible to set breakpoints, watch variables, view the stack and step through code in the Visual Studio debugger.
In addition to the currently available emulator for Windows Phone, Visual Studio 2015 includes a powerful emulator for Android. This means that you will be able to test Android apps from within Visual Studio.
As a developer, you will be able to experience improved plugin management that allows adding custom plugins from git or the file system, along with the ability to configure their apps for individual platforms. The latest preview release also adds support for Apache Cordova 4.0 with plenty of bug fixes and improvements.
Visual Studio 2015 Preview release also includes updates to WPF, Windows Forms, performance enhancements to RyuJIT in addition to improvements to .NET’s SIMD support.
Microsoft also announced that they will open source .NET Core 5 with support for Windows, Linux and Mac. In fact, there are plans to contribute .NET Core 5 to the .NET Foundation. Moreover, .NET Core 5 will be added on GitHub.
Along with Visual Studio 2015 Preview, Microsoft also released a roadmap for WPF with support for transparent child windows and multi-image cursor files. Microsoft also released improved Visual Studio WPF tooling with enhancements to Blend, new visual diagnostic tools and a timeline tool for performance diagnostics.
