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.

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.

Integrate into the development environment Visual Assist or ReSharper.

Version Control

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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, ...

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.