Visual Studio 2013 RC Now Available

September 9th, 2013

A few minutes ago, Soma announced the Release Candidate of Visual Studio 2013, .NET Framework 4.5.1 and Team Foundation Server 2013. Also announced was the Virtual Launch date – November 13th, 2013:

The RC release is the next big step toward the release of Visual Studio 2013. Today I am also excited to announce that Visual Studio 2013 will RTM at Windows 8.1 GA and the Visual Studio 2013 Virtual Launch will be held on November 13th, 2013! Available online around the world, more details can be found on the virtual launch event on the events page.

If you missed the preview, here are some of the cool things in this release for C++ developers:

Support for the C++11 =default, =delete, NSDMI and alias templates

Supports ISO C11 language features including _Bool, compound literals, designated initializers, and mixing declarations with code.

C++ AMP Texture support is enhanced.

Auto-Vectorizer now recognizes and optimizes more C++ patterns to make your code run faster.

New Profile Guided Optimization for Windows Store app development.

Support for native/JavaScript interop debugging, Windows Runtime exception diagnosis, and async code debugging (both Windows Runtime and PPL).

Graphics and GPU Debugging Improvements.

Defaulted functions.

Enhanced code formatting.

For a complete list of what is in Visual Studio 2013 RC for C++ developers, visit the MSDN library (or watch this video). For a peek into the future of C++, see Herb Sutter’s BUILD talk. He and others also spoke at Going Native 2013 – swing by the site later this week and catch the video!

Your feedback is important. Download Visual Studio 2013 RC, kick the tires for a bit, then send us your thoughts through the usual channels.

Feedback can also be sent from within Visual Studio using the menu in the top-right corner of the IDE (send a smile, send a frown, or report a bug).

Thanks!