The first VS vNext development milestone already dogfooded in Redmond

Sep 6, 2011 17:51 GMT  ·  By

In parallel with the development of Windows 8, Microsoft is also building the next major iteration of Visual Studio, the successor of Visual Studio 2010.

It should be obvious that just as VS 2010 was connected to Windows 7, Visual Studio vNext will be offered for developers to build applications for Windows 8.

Microsoft has already compiled the first pre-release Build of Visual Studio vNext, the development milestone which will be offered to early adopters outside of Redmond.

This piece of information comes from Zain Naboulsi, senior developer evangelist at Microsoft, who is currently among the company’s employees testing VS vNext pre-release internally.

“I’m actually running two versions of vNext currently; the one that will be made available to the public as a pre-release at some point and the one we build internally so I have a pretty good handle on what you will see and what is coming out. I can say that there are some great things that are being done with the product you will definitely enjoy,” he stated.

Naboulsi published a blog post focusing on the performances enhancements in the next version of Visual Studio. It’s certainly an excellent read, and more than worth your time, even though it’s really a sum of the details that the software giant already shared with the public.

“Naturally, at this time, I can’t go very deep into the inner-workings of the improvements but will endeavor to list them out and explain somewhat based on information currently available. Also, be aware that this is a very early look at these features so there will be many improvements made as the product gets closer to RTM,” Naboulsi said.

But what’s extremely interesting is that Microsoft has already finalized the work on the first pre-release Build of Visual Studio vNext which it will offer to testers.

Naboulsi did not reveal a specific availability point, trying in fact not to even hint at it. But the fact of the matter is that the proximity of the BUILD conference is by no means a coincidence.

I for one am expecting Microsoft to offer not only a Windows 8 pre-release Build, but also a Visual Studio vNext pre-release Build at BUILD.