Visual Studio 2013 RC, VS 2013 RTM, Windows 8.1 RTM, and Launch

Wow… all sorts of announcements this morning. Let me summarize for you quickly:

• Visual Studio 2013 RC and Team Foundation Server 2013 RC is ready to download: MSDN Subscriber Downloads, http://aka.ms/GetVS2013
• You will be able to build & test your Windows 8.1 Store apps with Visual Studio 2013
• Remember that you can use both Visual Studio 2013 and TFS 2013 in production with the “Go-Live” license. That means you will be supported by Microsoft and will have a supported upgrade path to the RTM version. You can use Visual Studio 2013 for most solutions & projects with “round-tripping” without requiring the entire team to upgrade.
• I hope you’ll be part of the first ever TFS Upgrade Weekend scheduled for this weekend!
• Be sure to let the product team know if you have any issues by reporting them on Connect or suggestions on User Voice
• Check out the system requirements and platform compatibility page for the RC. You’ll notice the RC will not install on Windows 8.1 Preview.
• Visual Studio 2013 and Team Foundation Server 2013 will RTM on October 18, 2013 at the same time Windows 8.1 is generally available to the public.
• Windows 8.1 RTM is ready to download today for MSDN Subscribers: MSDN Subscriber Downloads
• The Virtual Launch for Visual Studio 2013 and Team Foundation Server 2013 will be on November 13, 2013 — You’ll want to save the date and register at: http://events.visualstudio.com

New Features in Visual Studio 2013 RC and Team Foundation Server 2013 RC

• Office 365 Cloud Business Apps: With Visual Studio 2013 RC, Microsoft delivers a new capability to build Office 365 Cloud Business Apps that run in the cloud. These apps take advantage of the rich platform capabilities exposed by Windows Azure and Office 365. As cloud-based apps, they are available to a myriad of devices to aggregate data and services from in and out of an enterprise, and integrate user identities and social graphs. These applications integrate with the application lifecycle management capabilities of Visual Studio, bridging the worlds of the business app developer with IT operations.
• Work Item Charting: A new feature in Team Foundation Server 2013 RC is Work Item Charting which enables developers to quickly create diverse charts to visualize data drawn from work item queries, such as bugs, user stories, and tasks.
  As of today, this feature will also be automatically available to customers using Team Foundation Service as part of our regular feature releases to the service.
• TypeScript: Less than a year ago, Microsoft released the first public preview of TypeScript, a language and tools for application-scale JavaScript development. With Visual Studio 2013 RC, we are including the most recently released version of TypeScript tooling (v0.9.1.1) as we continue to seek community feedback from our early adopters.
  TypeScript brings classes, modules and optional static types to JavaScript development. In Visual Studio, this enables rich tools like live error reporting as you type, IntelliSense, and Rename refactoring.
• Web Development: Visual Studio 2013 RC introduces refinement to new web development features and capabilities such as a new Browser Link panel, Browser Link extensibility API and updates to SignalR 2, MVC5 and Web API 2 platforms.
• Peek Definition: In Visual Studio 2013 Preview, we released a new inline preview feature called Peek Definition that enables developers to preview code being referenced in their classes without leaving their context.
  In Visual Studio 2013 RC, this feature is further enhanced by enabling code in the inline peek to be editable, making it even easier to change code or fix issues without leaving the original view.
• CodeLens: In Visual Studio 2013 Preview, we released a new feature called CodeLens which provides deep contextual insights inline within source code files. CodeLens for C# and Visual Basic provides information such as the number of references, and recent changes from source control.
  In Visual Studio 2013 RC, we enhance CodeLens by enabling integration of Microsoft’s Lync unified communications platform, making it easy to contact the developer who most recently worked on a piece of code from directly within the Visual Studio editor. For developers working with source code in Team Foundation Server 2013 RC, we also added several new indicators exposing bugs, work items and code reviews related to the class or member.
• C++: During the Build conference Microsoft wrote about the roadmap for C++ standards conformance in Visual C++. Last week at the Going Native conference in Redmond, we hosted a great discussion about the present and near future of modern, standard C++, and talked about what’s coming in Visual C++ and C++ on Microsoft’s platforms. In Visual Studio 2013 RC, we’ve made more steps along the roadmap laid out at Build, adding C++ 11 features like using aliases, = default and non-static data member initializers.
• NuGet & Sonatype: NuGet Package License Details: in partnership with Sonatype, there is an update to both the NuGet gallery and Visual Studio add-in that provides license data associated for each NuGet package based on the Sonatype Component Lifecycle Management (CLM) platform.
• The Sonatype press release can be found here: http://www.sonatype.com/Microsoft-and-Sonatype-Partner
• Sonatype blog: http://blog.sonatype.com/people/2013/09/microsoft-and-sonatype-partner

Remember, we have a brand new “Release Archive” which helps you track all of the new features for Team Foundation Service and which version of Team Foundation Server you will start to see those features: http://tfs.visualstudio.com/en-us/news/release-archive

You can find out more about today’s announcements here:

• Soma’s Blog
• Steve “Guggs” Guggenheimer’s Blog
• Windows 8.1 RTM Extended Availability News
• Channel 9: Visual Studio Toolbox Show

Go start downloading!

Ed B.