Visual Studio 2022 17.5, the latest version of Microsoft’s signature IDE, is now generally available. Highlights of the new release include capabilities for C++ cross-platform development, AI-powered coding suggestions, streamlined API development, and improved code search.

Also known simply as Visual Studio 17.5, the IDE can be downloaded from the Visual Studio website.

For C++ developers, the Linux console has been moved into the integrated terminal to make it easier to interact with a remote Linux machine. The integrated console window allows developers to offer input and see console input. When developers are using a dev container, they now can run them on remote machines. Developers also can open an interactive shell in the running container in the integrated terminal. The standard library has been expanded to include C11 atomics in MSVC (Microsoft C ++) compiler. Initial support only is for lock-free atomics. New CMake capabilities speed up compilation workflows.

Visual Studio 17.5 also offers AI-powered, intent-based code suggestions, providing inline suggestions in the editor based on recent changes. Machine learning algorithms are used to understand the structure of repeated edits made to code and suggest changes.

The general release of Visual Studio 17.5 follows three preview releases, the latest one arriving on January 18. Elsewhere in Visual Studio 17.5:

• Significant improvements have been made to ordering and relevancy of code search while removing the results limit without compromising on speed. Code search now has a preview panel supporting results for C# and C++, allowing developers to see the context of the selected result.
• An accessibility checker has been added to detect common accessibility issues for XAML-based desktop applications.
• ASP.NET Core apps can be deployed to Azure Container Apps in just a few steps. Also for .NET and cloud development, .http/.rest files have been added to ASP.NET Core projects, along with an integrated HTTP client. These files act as terse definitions for API endpoints, providing a way to rapidly iterate on API development.
• The Razor syntax and C# experience has been improved, with support for code actions in Razor files.
• Incremental .NET builds have been made faster by only building projects that have been changed and skipping projects with no changes.
• The debugger text visualizer has been improved with additional tools and manipulation options.