In an effort to persuade developers to build apps for its Universal Windows Platform, Microsoft has released the August 2016 edition of the evaluation Windows developer virtual machines (VM). The company is now allowing developers to download the latest version on their Macs or Windows devices to try out the Windows developer environment without wasting time on setting up devices for test usage.
The installations of these virtual machines allow developers access to the latest version of various development tools including the Windows Bridge for iOS (Project Islandwood), Visual Studio Community Update 3, and Bash on Ubuntu on Windows. The full list includes:
- Windows 10 Enterprise Evaluation, Version 1607
- Visual Studio 2015 Community Update 3 (Build 14.0.25425.01)
- Windows developer SDK and tools (Build 14393)
- Microsoft Azure SDK for .NET (Build 2.9.1)
- Windows Bridge for iOS (Build 00.1.160728)
- Windows UWP samples (Build 3.0.0)
- Windows Bridge for iOS samples
- Bash on Ubuntu on Windows
Microsoft has also noted that the download size for the virtual machines is 20GB, and that they come in a variety of flavors including Hyper-V, Parallels, VirtualBox, and VMWare. The company has cautioned that the VM expires on October 31, 2016, and that its terms of use can be viewed here. You can download virtual machine build 201608 from the Windows Dev Center.
Source: Microsoft