Visual Studio
Welcome to the Visual Studio UserVoice site. Let us know what you would like to see in future versions of the Visual Studio suite of products. This site is for suggestions and ideas. If you need to file a bug, visit the Visual Studio Connect site: http://connect.microsoft.com/visualstudio.
We look forward to hearing from you!
Thanks – Doug Turnure
Visual Studio Team
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Provide Option to Allow Project Build Events to Use PowerShell script
Currently C#, C++ and VB build events allow folks to enter batch commands and those command get emitted to a CMD batch file and are then executed. However the CMD batch language is far less capable than PowerShell. Please provide an option to specify PowerShell command directly in build events and then execute those commands against PowerShell.exe instead of cmd.exe.
139 votes -
Integrate Reporting Services Projects into Visual Studio 2010
Currently you have to open Reporting Services Projects in VS 2008 or Business Intelligence Developer Studio (BIDS). So you have to use both VS 2010 and VS 2008 with TFS.
71 votes -
Integrate into the development environment Visual Assist or ReSharper.
Integrate into the development environment Visual Assist or ReSharper.
70 votes -
Add native support for GIT
Version Control
41 votes -
Support for UML State Machine diagrams
VS2010 is missing support for UML State Machine Diagrams (also known as UML State Machines, or UML State Diagrams).
We are already using state machines to do code generation, but unfortunately the solution is not built inside VS2010. We even have to manually parse the state machine diagram "dsl" which is not fun. Would be a huge time saver if it was integrated.
To be honest it does not have to be "UML" but that is the best fit for what is already in VS. We need triggers, guards, entry/exit actions. Nested and orthogonal states would also be useful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UML_state_machine
… more
34 votes -
Add a switch to MSBuild to force being strict about only building projects in the solution
Currently MSBuild determines all project dependencies and builds those projects regardless of whether they're in the solution being built. This means MSBuild successfully builds the solution but the solution fails to build in Visual Studio.
It would be great to have a switch for MSBuild that would force it to only build the projects in the solution.
Scenario:
The solution AAA.sln has project Foo.csproj which references Bar.csproj (also in the solution). Bar.csproj lives in another solution (BBB.sln) and was modified by a developer to now reference BarHelper.csproj. The developer checked in the changes to BBB.sln but didn’t realise AAA.sln would… more30 votes -
Include Code Contracts features in all editions of Visual Studio
Include Code Contracts features in all editions of Visual Studio. Requiring Ultimate edition makes this very useful feature useless when working with others who do not have Visual Studio Ultimate.
As a side note, I talked this feature up at our company from Spec# to the Code Contracts SDK only to be disappointing when we couldn't adopt it in the end because it was exclusive to higher additions of Visual Studio, we currently use Professional.
29 votes -
Help me know what branch I'm working on
We use extensive branching in our software development lifecycle. When I open the same solution on different branches I can't easily tell which branch I'm working on. This often forces me to flip through 2 or 3 windows of VS to find the right branch
26 votes -
Make dialog windows non-modal
In IDE modal windows sometimes are really annoying hiding each other and not allowing to get back and copy/read smth without closing current window. I think the approach they use in SQL Management Studio is much more user-friendly
24 votes -
Save default project(s) in the .sln file
As per http://stackoverflow.com/questions/694730/why-is-set-as-startup-option-stored-in-the-sou-file-and-not-the-sln-file/1808264#1808264 , store the Startup Project(s) selected in the IDE in the .sln file, but allow them to be overridden by Startup Project(s) stored in the .suo file.
22 votes -
Spend more time fixing the little things.
Visual Studio has, no doubt, thousands of little bugs that, taken individually, do not make the bar for a given release. The accumulation of these little bugs over the years has significantly impacted the overall quality experience of using Visual Studio. Those little bugs are important - spend more time on them, rather than summarily closing them when they appear on connect.
22 votes -
show the full path as a tooltip in 'Recent Projects and Solutions' menu
I sometimes have copies of the same solution. When opening a solution via the 'Recent Projects and Soultions' menu under 'File', the full path is not shown, so I often open the wrong one. Show a tool tip with the full path when I hover over an entry.
20 votes -
Shortcut for "Starting a new instance" of the Startup project
When you're using TFS and want to run you application, hitting 'F5' could be a pain in the ***.
You'll have to right-click on you project>Debug>Start new instance.A shortcut for that would come in handy for the startup project in your solution.
Shortcuts are the key to smooth working in my opinion.
19 votes -
Extend T4 code generator to create multiple files from one model with one template.
Custom code generation becomes more and more important. For example network messages can be described using .xls file (each message field is one Excel cell).
At the moment T4 cannot be used to gen multiple files from one model with one template.
In case of networking multiple files must be generated: a class file per message, a switch method for dispatching messages, a parser, an asynch handler of messages and timeouts, ...
18 votes -
Add search in Options menus
In Eclipse there is possibility to search for given option by name in the options menus. It will be very useful if there is a similar thing in Visual Studio options menus because its hard to find an option if you are not sure in which category it is.
18 votes -
All testing features starting from the professional edition
Test impact and MTM introduce great testing support for functional and no functional test that it should be available to all developers. The ultimate edition price reduce the opportunity for small/medium company to use this kind of functionalities.
17 votes -
Enable UI Map Hierarchy editing in Coded UI Test Editor
The Coded UI Test Editor introduce in Visual Studio Feature Pack 2 (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg269474.aspx) has great potential. Many times when recording control, the heirarchy created to represent nested control sometimes gets constructed incorrectly. For example, I may have nested UI structure like A->B->C->D and wish to interact with D. Many times the constructed UI Map will be lobotomized and only contain B->C->D or C->D when creating an interaction with D. What is odd about this is that Microsoft's UI Spy tool contained in the Windows SDK always gets the proper hierarchy. My suggestion is two-fold. Employ the UI Map… more
16 votes -
Allow me to run windows service projects (and stop/start) from Visual Studio
I work with windows services all day. I compile but compilation fails because my windows service is running. I jump to Services.msc and then stop the service. Then I compile again, then wait for it to finish, then jump back to services.msc and start the service. If i try to Run the project through VS, it says you can't do it. I'd like to manage this lifecycle all within visual studio. Allow me to know if a service is running or not and allow me to stop and start it. Also, allow me to Run and windows service project.
13 votes -
Provide the functionality of cut and paste objects in the UIMap
In CodedUI Test, while creating a UIMap, the GUI tool does not allow copying/cutting and pasting objects in the tree from one node to another. In order to do this, one has to open the UI Map in XML editor. It would be logical to provide such a functionality (It already exists in the object repository for tival tools like HP Quick Test Professional). It allows organizing the UIMap better (since UIMap object recording tends to create unnecesary parent replications for each new object added)
12 votes -
Allow customize the columns of the attach workitem section
Allow to customize the columns of the attach workitem section in the pending changes or checkin dialog. An option could be to use the selected views columns. With this searching the workitem to attach would be much easier.
12 votes