Build 2024: Microsoft Ships Visual Studio 2022 17.10

At Build 2024 today in Seattle, Microsoft announced the general availability of Visual Studio 2022 17.10, the latest version of its full-featured integrated development environment (IDE).

“This release features a new, single GitHub Copilot extension, marking a significant leap forward in AI-assisted development by embedding the power of advanced AI directly into strategic parts of your Integrated Development Environment (IDE),” Microsoft’s Mark Downie writes. “With the integration of GitHub Copilot directly into Visual Studio, we’re offering you a coding partner with improved context, providing smart suggestions and code completions that help you stay focused and productive.”

Visual Studio 2022 version 17.10 isn’t just about GitHub Copilot integration—this release also supports .NET Aspire, a new .NET WinUI workload with improved WinUI templates, and many other improvements—but it’s obviously the marquee feature.

According to Downie, Visual Studio now features an integrated version of the latest GitHub Copilot experience with code completion and GitHub Copilot Chat, the latter of which behaves like a coding partner you can interact with and build context over time. GitHub Copilot Chat also provides slash commands—like /doc, /explain, /fix, /optimize, /generate, and so on—and references to help you get answers grounded to your specific solution and projects.

GitHub Copilot also provides an AI-powered exception handler to assist with troubleshooting, a deadlock detection helper for identifying blocking states in your running application, and unit test generation and resolution capabilities.

GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio requires a GitHub Copilot subscription. You can learn more on the GitHub website.