As of yesterday, the Release Candidate of Visual Studio 2013 is now available! (And, MSFT changed its mind, so if you have an MSDN subscription, you can also download Windows 8.1 RTM!)
The feature my team (and others) has been working on, CodeLens, has undergone some major updates and cleanups since the preview. To see the most of it, you can go to
Here’s just one little picture including some of the new stuff. for the rest, go to the MSDN link above!
In the RC, we’ve added indicators for bugs, workitems, and code reviews that were attached to changesets for that code. Keep in mind, this is changesets associated with that class/method/property, not changesets associated with the file! This makes it super easy to browse through the code and see exactly who (authors indicator, showing the last person to change the code (above, Jamal Hartnett and 2 others), what (4 changes affected that constructor), why (for 2 bugs and 1 workitems), and who reviewed those changes (1 code review). You can also see that that constructor has 12 references from other code, and that in the current state, only 6 of 11 unit tests are passing.
In the authors and changes indicator, there’s also a “local version” tag that appears for the version of the code you have locally. If you’re working on some code, and you see that the changes indicator says “5 +1 changes”, you know that someone else has moedified and checked in a change to that code, so you better get the latest version, or, to quote South Park, “you’re gonna have a bad time!”
We also hooked up Lync integration, so if your org is using Lync, when you open the details popup, you can see the Lync status of the people who’ve touched the code (looks like Jamal is green, so he’s available!), and you get the full lync integration, with a link contact card, and the ability to IM or start a call/video chat right from inside the IDE!
We also added expanders, so in all of the TFS powered indicators you can see what workitems are related to what changesets by clicking the standard VS triangle expander. There’s also a new icon up in the upper left corner that lets you dock the popup into a full toolwindow, so you can move it around, make it bigger, and keep it open while you click through references or tests and navigate around in your code. Each different indicator can dock to its own toolwindow.
The references, test status, and tested by indicators also got makeovers and new features, so make sure to check those out as well. Those indicators are not powered by TFS, so they’ll work even if your org isn’t using TFS!
Leave a Reply