
Visual Studio 2015 and .NET 4.6 Available for Download - runesoerensen
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2015/07/20/visual-studio-2015-and-net-4-6-available-for-download.aspx
======
JohnTHaller
Note that the "comparison" page offers near-zero guidance on whether you're
allowed to use the Community edition, to the point that it's really not a
comparison at all: [https://www.visualstudio.com/vs-2015-product-
editions](https://www.visualstudio.com/vs-2015-product-editions)

The community edition is free for individual developers, developers creating
open source projects under an approved OSI license, or for up to 5 developers
in an entire organization. Basically, it's not for production use by companies
with more than 5 developers developing proprietary software. At least from my
quick reading of the license:
[https://www.visualstudio.com/support/legal/mt171547](https://www.visualstudio.com/support/legal/mt171547)

UPDATE: Community also excludes any organization with 250+ PCs or $1,000,000
or more in yearly revenue. (credit: icegreentea)

~~~
icegreentea
That's a pretty good summary. The only extra catch is that enterprise
organizations cannot use the community edition except for open source /
educational purposes. The kicker is that they define enterprise as 250+ PCs
-OR- $1 million plus annual revenue.

That definitely borks a lot of smallish companies working in certain fields.

~~~
felixgallo
to be honest, if you have 250 PCs or $1mm revenue, you can spend $45/month per
developer on the software tools necessary for them to do their jobs without
getting 'borked'.

------
runesoerensen
There are more details about the .NET 4.6 release on the .NET blog [1]

[1]
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2015/07/20/announcing...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2015/07/20/announcing-
net-framework-4-6.aspx)

~~~
thecopy
Glad to that developement on WPF has not stagnated.

~~~
nhebb
Surprisingly, there was even a winforms update recently.

------
math
For me, .NET Core and ASP.NET 5 are the most exciting things going on in this
space at the moment. On Linux, it's all still too buggy to be usable in beta5
(the version shipping with VS2015), but the vibe I'm getting from the weekly
standups is they are going to start prioritizing this very soon and it's going
to be very usable on a 3-month time frame.

~~~
wluu
Definitely.

Keep an eye on the published roadmap on their wiki:
[https://github.com/aspnet/Home/wiki/Roadmap](https://github.com/aspnet/Home/wiki/Roadmap)

Beta 7's focus on cross platform should be good!

------
iolothebard
I love how the VS2013 update 5 is 6.1GB where you can download the full
version of Ultimate with update 5 and it's only 4.8GB.

1990s me would be blown away that VS could be this big. I'd be even more
impressed that my work fiber downloaded it at 10.2MB/sec (yes MB not Mb).

~~~
twerquie
1900s me had a fabric binder full of MSDN CDs - dozens upon dozens it seemed -
with the same software footprint and a harder "download" process.

~~~
iolothebard
I have those from as late as 2006.

Hoarder me keeps everything :-)

------
zuck9
Here's the direct download link for the English Enterprise edition which I'm
downloading using wget:
[http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/4/7/647EC5B1-68BE-4...](http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/4/7/647EC5B1-68BE-445E-B137-916A0AE51304/vs2015.ent_enu.iso)

~~~
frontier
How did you find this url? I would like to get the community edition ISO url,
but can only find the RC dated 4/27/2015, when searching
download.microsoft.com.

~~~
zuck9
Got it from VisualStudio.com, there is an option at the bottom in the
Downloads page to get the ISO which is the same as the one in MSDN (same SHA1
values listed) but has different file names.

Here's English Community:
[http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/B/C/0BC321A4-013F-4...](http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/B/C/0BC321A4-013F-479C-84E6-4A2F90B11269/vs2015.com_enu.iso)

~~~
frontier
Doh! missed that, thank you!

------
ifdefdebug
Visual Studio 2015 Community: Full-featured Integrated Development Environment
for building Web, Windows Desktop and cross-platform iOS, Android, and Windows
apps [1].

... cross-platform iOS, Android, and Windows apps? That's new, isn't it?

[1] [https://www.visualstudio.com/en-
us/products/vs-2015-product-...](https://www.visualstudio.com/en-
us/products/vs-2015-product-editions.aspx)

EDIT: Err, sorry, the page changed since I wrote this comment, the quoted
statement is gone...

EDIT2: Looks like the page is flipping between two versions as I hit the
reload button, probably a mirroring problem. I apologize the noise.

~~~
Cshelton
Yes it is. Although, is .Net fully open sourced yet? or still in the process?
I'm not so sure you can build an IOS app quite yet in visual studio?

~~~
megaman22
Parts of it. Stuff like WinForms and System.Web are so wrapped around the axle
of Windows that they probably won't be open-sourced, but a lot of it has been.

~~~
tracker1
Winforms is fairly windows centric, but iirc there is a Mono compatability for
most of the interfaces... as to System.Web, I'm pretty sure this has been open
since ASP.Net v3, which iirc is included with Mono.

I haven't tracked Mono & .Net as closely for the past few years as I've been
doing far more node dev, and/or migrating away from .Net apps.

------
euroclydon
I am so scarred from trying to develop an ASP.NET vNext website using the VS
2015 preview releases. The project templates never synced with the tagged code
in github, and there were endless bugs. Is it stable now? By that I mean, can
I reliably override one of the ASP.NET vNext libraries from source?

------
rottyguy
Has anyone done anything interesting with Roslyn to date (v1 is mentioned in
the notes)?

~~~
JamesBarney
I was working on a large enterprise application that had a dynamically
generated data model, so all data access was done through strings. So much of
the code looked like dictionary accesses

"if(car[Constants.Wheels"].ContainsKey[Constants.FrontLeftWheel])"

Now unfortunately there was not just one constants file, this application
numbered nearly 60 projects and each one possessed a constants file and people
added strings when they needed to access a new item from the data model.

public class Constants { string FrontLeftWheel = "FrontLeftWheel; }

I was given the painful task of replacing every single constant and string in
the code with new constants generated from the data model. This probably
involved making something along the lines of 40,000 replacements. Luckily I
remembered a post by Eric Lippert on Roslyn. Roslyn helped me replace all of
the old constants with constants generated from the new data model based on a
few heuristics to order by best matches but Roslyn saved me months of mind
numbing work so I'ma HUGE fan.

~~~
skMed
Do you think you could write a blog post about this? Finding interesting uses
for Roslyn may help drive its use in the community. Plus, that just sounds
interesting.

------
isxek
The provided link is for those with an MSDN subscription. I'm waiting for the
Community Edition to appear.

~~~
saticmotion
Appears to be available here:
[https://www.dreamspark.com/Product/Product.aspx?productid=10...](https://www.dreamspark.com/Product/Product.aspx?productid=101)

~~~
stinos
Didn't DreamSpark used to have the Pro edition? Now for both 2013 and 2015
it's the community edition

~~~
saticmotion
No idea about Pro, but I downloaded 2013 Ultimate from Dreamspark.

------
locusm
Do any versions do away with having to login? Spent a weekend on Moreton
Island last year and was unable to login, hence unable to do any work. The
Partner Edition sucks for this reason.

~~~
X-Cubed
Visual Studio encourages you to sign in with your Microsoft account, but you
can license it with a product key instead.

Help -> Register Product -> License with a product key

~~~
RobotCaleb
Is that valid for vs2015. Everything I've read from them says they're dropping
away with product keys for it.

------
snoman
One subtly awesome thing here is that with ryujit being a part of 4.6 then you
can do simd in .net without any hacky pre requisites and workarounds.

([http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2014/04/07/the-jit-
fi...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2014/04/07/the-jit-finally-
proposed-jit-and-simd-are-getting-married.aspx))

------
oferzelig
VS 2015 is version 14.0. VS 2013 is version 12.0. What happened to version
13.0 ?

~~~
Quppa
Triskaidekaphobia
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triskaidekaphobia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triskaidekaphobia)).
The same thing happened to Microsoft Office - Office 2007 was version 12
internally, yet Office 2010 jumped to version 14. On the plus side, it means
that the upcoming release (Office 2016) has an internal version number that
matches the year.

I guess the question is whether the people at Microsoft who decide these
things are themselves superstitious or whether they think their customers are
superstitious (to the point that they would avoid a product with an unlucky
internal version number).

------
mhomde
I'm really loving how the refactor and generate stuff has developed over the
years. It is such a different experience these days and I'm probably at least
five times as productive as a result of it.

First we had no refactor tools at all, and how we survived I'll never now

Then basic refactor tools where introduced. You could call up a dialog to do
explicit refactoring.

Then the generate functionality was introduced and you could start doing
things like typing out a class name that didn't exist, right-click and
generate a class and file with that name.

Now everything been taken to the far end. I can just edit parameters, types
etc directly in the editor, a light bulb will appear, I click it and choose
how it will apply refactoring regarding my changes. If I want to change the
type returned from a method inherited from a base class I can just edit it in
the derived class and have it apply it on the base class.

Same with generate, just type a lot stuff like you want it to be, a light bulb
will appear and it generates everything with correct parameters and all.

If I want to break stuff out of a blob class to a another class called by the
original class, I just highlight the methods in the editor and chose "create
new class" and it will add initialization for the new class, a field or
property for it.

Sometimes when I need to split a class in two there really isn't any good
refactoring tool. So what do you do? Copy the class and rename it so you have
them side by side in the same file. Eliminate the fields and properties for
each that you don't want in either. It will now highlight all the code you've
broken. Now delete and change all that has been highlighted. Then just click
the light bulb and choose "move class to file named whatever.class". Voila!
It's such a streamlined process.

Or just things like Ctrl-clicking something to navigate to it (or pressing
F12). Or quickly finding what code calls a method. Or snippet templates like
ctor or prop.

To put the cherry on the cake I can press Ctrl-M+Space and Ctrl-M+Z to have
the Code Maid plugin reorganize the code and normalize white space.

Seeing, doing and navigating has all come together so nicely and totally
changed the way I code. It has made constant and continuous refactoring
feasible and effortless. The only downside is that I'm not always sure where
Visual Studio ends and Resharper begins :)

The thing I miss though is unit testing being as "on-the-fly" and integrated
into the editor. I'd love to be able to write mini-tests as annotations to
methods and have VS highlight when it breaks them.

... and maybe continuous background compiling and "live-updating" of apps :)

~~~
itsuart
Well, Resharper is available since VS2003 if not earlier. It has what VS2015
has to offer and more. Including extracting code into methods and classes. I
can't even image the pain developing without it (at least before VS 2015).

~~~
mhomde
Yeah, I've been a heavy Resharper user for a long time as well... but now I
almost don't know which bulbs and stuff is VS and what is Resharper :) and
Resharper re-binds some shortcuts. Feels like Resharper is a couple of steps
in front of VS still though, the refactor LINQ expression functionality for
instance is simply fantastic

------
chinhodado
Does anyone know if the RTM version will be able to upgrade to the full
version once it is released? Also, will it be able to install updates later
on?

~~~
Locke1689
RTM = Release to Manufacturing = full version.

~~~
minot
How about my release candidate that I installed about a month back? Will it
update automatically? Does it even need to? Did anything change?

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
If you're building Windows 10 Universal apps you should hold off until Windows
10 is released on the 29th. I just ran the VS2015 Community installer and it
prompted me to remove the Windows 10 Universal Apps Tools RC.

~~~
minot
Ah. I'll wait until I upgrade this computer to Windows 10. I will follow up
with a clean install of Windows 10 if the nVidia drivers don't act up. Thank
you!

------
moron4hire
Doesn't seem to have licenses available for BizSpark accounts yet?

EDIT: If I check my email, I get an answer

    
    
        All BizSpark members who have an active Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN
        subscription will see that their subscription has been automatically converted to
        Visual Studio Enterprise 2015 with MSDN when Visual Studio 2015 is released.

------
merb
The news says nothing about 64-bit Support. That's definitely the first Visual
Studio that has a 64-bit Version.

~~~
0xffffabcd
Because VS still is 32-bit[1] program.

[1]: [http://i.imgur.com/n3fyEos.png](http://i.imgur.com/n3fyEos.png)

------
Olivier26
Any idea for the availibility of the Productivity Power Tools for Visual
Studio 2015?

~~~
eropple
The 2013 ones work if you go hack the VSIX. It's just a version change in the
manifest.

------
karpodiem
as a newish dev (eventually I'll work my way to vim), I really enjoy using
Visual Studio, and my wallet is very happy that they decided to release a
Community edition.

Microsoft has been making some great strides lately - keep it up!

~~~
romanovcode
If my understanding is correct you're using VS and writing C#. If that's the
case it's just stupid to use VIM.

Let me tell you one thing: Using VIM will not make you "pro hacker". It won't
even make you more productive, probably.

~~~
RoboSeldon
_If my understanding is correct you 're using VS and writing C#. If that's the
case it's just stupid to use VIM._

Please don't call people stupid just because you don't like their workflow.
BTW, you can use a Vim emulation layer in VS.

~~~
mrec
In fairness to GP, GGP _isn 't_ using vim, he just seems to have picked up on
or imagined a meme that "Real Programmers use vi or emacs".

Which, yes, is a bit daft.

------
sixbrx
I don't see upgrade pricing mentioned anywhere - If one already has Visual
Studio 2013 Pro with MSDN (active), is it necessary to repurchase to get 2015?

~~~
SBG11
You should be able to get VS2015 Professional as part of your subscripton

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/31/visual_studio_2015_m...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/31/visual_studio_2015_msdn_subscriptions/)

------
richerlariviere
I hope they plan to bring Visual Studio on Mac OS X

~~~
swyphcosmo
Have you seen Visual Studio Code [1]? It's not full VS, but it's a good start.

[1] [https://code.visualstudio.com/](https://code.visualstudio.com/)

~~~
richerlariviere
I've tried it but it's not the same feeling. However, VS Code is perfect for
quick file edit.

------
highmastdon
Too bad this does only contain the preview of .NET 5. I hoped this release
would bring a more stable version of .NET 5

~~~
Locke1689
It contains .NET 4.6, which is stable and not .NET 5. AFAIK, .NET 5 doesn't
exist?

~~~
jeroen
asp.net 5 beta 5:
[https://github.com/aspnet/Home/releases/tag/v1.0.0-beta5](https://github.com/aspnet/Home/releases/tag/v1.0.0-beta5)

------
rzw
+1 on everything. Little disappointed @Test coverage as it is not available in
Community!

------
mariusmg
Installing the enterprise version now. Hopefully it works fine side by side
with 2013.

~~~
detay
I had 2015 RC working side by side with 2013 with no problems. Full release
should work properly as well.

------
slickwilli
What's the eq. for my MSDN Ultimate? Enterprise?

------
WorldWideWayne
Warning to anyone using Windows 2012 Server R2 as your workstation - if you
install Microsoft Emulator for Android, it enables Hyper-V which will cause
your video drivers to no longer work since Hyper-V replaces your video card
with a virtual one (or something like that).

------
Garbage
Announcement page -
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2015/07/20/visual-...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2015/07/20/visual-
studio-2015-and-net-4-6-available-for-download.aspx)

~~~
sctb
Thanks, we updated the link from the MSDN subscriber's page.

