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Last month Microsoft released the second preview of Visual Studio 2022 version 17.6 Preview, which comes packed with new productivity features and improvements aimed at enhancing the game development experience, mobile development, and enterprise management and it is available for download.

Preview 2 brings several new features for Visual Studio 2022 aimed at increasing developer productivity. The development team has responded to customer feedback with Git Stage and Commit During Build, allowing users to stage changes and commit them during a build. The Merge Dialog has also been updated, providing users with better insights into the impact of merge operations and warning them of potential conflicts. The introduction of breakpoint groups enables users to organize their debugging processes better, while Instrumentation Profiling for C++ provides performance analysis for that programming language. Additionally, the Create Member Function feature offers quick ways of adding constructors and equality operators to C++ codes using a three-dot and screwdriver icon inside of the code editor.

Visual Studio 17.6 Preview 2, is aimed at simplifying game development for both indie and AAA game creators. Among the improvements is the integration of Unreal Engine Code Analysis, which enables users to see warnings and errors from the Unreal Header Tool directly in Visual Studio. The feature emits warnings and errors while parsing Unreal-related C++ headers, which are displayed in the Error List and visually denoted by purple squiggles in the editor.

In addition, the popular HLSL Tools extension by Tim Jones is now available as part of Visual Studio, offering users improved productivity with syntax highlighting, statement completion, and go-to-definition. To use HLSL Tools, users must enable the component in the Game development with C++ or Game development with Unity workload in the Visual Studio Installer.

Regarding the .NET Mobile development, with the new Android Manifest Editor, developers can easily set available properties and request device-specific permissions by double-clicking on the AndroidManifest.xml file from the Solution Explorer. This feature is expected to simplify the process of developing Android apps, saving developers time and effort.

Regarding enterprise management, in the latest update, two new features have been introduced. One of the features allows companies to host and deploy Visual Studio layouts on an intranet website, in addition to file shares. This option can simplify layout maintenance and improve installation performance for organizations that use multiple global network file shares. This capability is currently targeted for IT administrators to remotely deploy from, and users can visit the feedback site to view guidance on how to enable this experience.

The other feature addresses the need to limit exposure to available products in the Installer. The installer Available tab now gives easy access to current previews, while also providing the ability to restrict exposure to certain products by disabling channels or using the new HideAvailableTab policy to disable the available tab overall.

In addition to the original release blog post, in the last paragraphs, Microsoft and the development team encourage users to provide feedback and share their suggestions for new features and improvements, emphasizing their commitment to constantly enhancing the Visual Studio experience.

Lastly, developers interested in learning more about this and other releases of Visual Studio can visit very detailed release notes about updates, changes, and new features around the Visual Studio 2022 IDE.