Microsoft has released Visual Studio 2022 17.3. This update brings support for .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI), the ability to develop apps for Microsoft Teams, C++ improvements, Azure Container Apps, and improved Live Unit Testing. You can see a complete list of new features by opening Help > What’s New in Visual Studio.
The headline feature in this update is that .NET MAUI has graduated from preview support and is now available in the release channel of Visual Studio 2022 on Windows. The support includes productivity features that will help you quickly build and ship .NET client apps to Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows from a single codebase. Hot Reload, Live Visual Tree, and XAML Live Preview are some of the tools that can make you more productive.
Next, Microsoft has added Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio, which helps you make apps for Teams. If you want to make a Teams Command Bot that responds to chat commands, you can use the Teams Toolkit, which automatically configures the Bot Framework. If you want to start using the toolkit, Microsoft has created a walk-through on how to create a notification bot using the toolkit.
This update also introduces low priority builds for C++ where you can limit how much CPU power goes into compiling your code. It also introduces new static analysis checks on std::optional to help you write safer code. Microsoft said it has been hard at work improving C++ performance. Visual Studio now indexes and colourizes C++ code by around 2X compared to previous releases of Visual Studio.
To get started using Visual Studio 2022 17.3, you can download the software now and perform a fresh installation. If you have an older version of Visual Studio 2022 already installed, you should see a pop-up asking you to update. Just follow the instructions to get the latest version.