The Visual Studio 2019 team here in Redmond has been living under a perpetually grey, wet winter sky since our last minor release. Thankfully, we are beginning to see the sun making regular appearances. It is our hope this newest release will also brighten your day. Visual Studio 2019 version 16.5 contains anticipated new features from XAML, .NET, C++ and Debugging. In addition, we have addressed several issues found in our Preview releases. We believe this combination is ready to make your developer journey more productive. If you have any additional ideas to contribute to our product, we invite you to participate in our Developer Community forum.
While I elaborate, why not download our latest version to try for yourself? Also keep in mind, a more complete list of all changes are available in the Visual Studio 2019 release notes.
.NET Mobile Development
Our first feature to discuss is XAML Hot Reload for Xamarin.Forms. This feature speeds up your development and makes it easier to build, experiment, and iterate over your mobile app’s user interface. How? You do not need to rebuild your app each time you tweak your UI as changes instantly show while the app is running! Because this updates as you make changes, if you have interacted with the application, the state of the application is not lost as you make the changes. Consequently, you do not have to recreate the repo as you previously did. That’s pretty exciting, isn’t it?
We heard lots of feedback on a specific need shared via Developer Community Suggestions. Due to the fact, you wanted to see changes made to your XAML reload instantaneously on multiple targets such as an iOS simulator and Android emulator, so we have added that capability.
.NET Productivity
To help with .NET Productivity several features ship in this Visual Studio 2019 version 16.5 release.
First of all, you can convert if statements to switch statements or switch expressions. To do this, place your cursor on the if keyword. Press Ctrl+. to trigger the Quick Actions and Refactorings menu. Finally, select Convert to ‘switch’ statement or Convert to ‘switch’ expression.