Share via

Visual Studio Icon Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 Release Notes

  • Article

License Terms | Visual Studio Blog | Developer Community

Note

This is not the latest version of Visual Studio. To download the latest release, please visit the current release notes for Visual Studio 2019.

Release Notes Icon Visual Studio 2012 Update 1

released on November 26, 2012

Note

Support for Visual Studio 2012 is only provided on Update 4, which is considered the Visual Studio 2012 Service Pack. For more information, see the Microsoft Support Lifecycle Policy.

Download Visual Studio 2012

You can download Visual Studio 2012 from My.VisualStudio.com. My.VisualStudio.com requires a free Dev Essentials subscription, or a Visual Studio Subscription.

What's New in this Release

Windows development

For the release of Windows 8, Visual Studio 2012 added new templates, designers, and testing and debugging tools to support this new platform, including support for Windows Store apps with the Windows 8 Simulator. Update 1 adds support for mixed-mode (managed/native) debugging of Windows Store apps, and support for native ARM dump debugging. This update also includes code analysis support for Windows Phone 8 apps. But Update 1 isn’t just about new Windows platforms. It also enables you to target Windows XP with native C++ applications in Visual Studio 2012.

SharePoint development

With Update 1, we also invested in expanding our lifecycle tools for SharePoint 2010, especially for testing and quality assurance. You can now use unit tests and coded UI tests for simulating user interaction, including the Microsoft Fakes Framework to stub out SharePoint dependencies. Load testing support enables stress testing of SharePoint applications under simulated load and network conditions. In addition, you can now capture SharePoint logging information using IntelliTrace to provide a rich analysis experience for SharePoint applications.

Agile teams

Visual Studio 2012 brought a lot of new features to support the work of agile teams. Update 1 builds upon these advancements with significant usability improvements in Team Foundation Server’s web interface and a much improved source viewing and diffing experience. Update 1 also includes functionality for Team Foundation Server that first appeared in Team Foundation Service, such as Kanban support with a Kanban board and a cumulative flow diagram. In the IDE, Code Maps enable you to create and view dynamic visualizations of relevant code to understand and navigate its relationships faster.

Continuous quality

Enabling continuous quality is a key focus area of Update 1. Code coverage for automated tests is now available for manual testing, which enables you to analyze which areas of a code base are used during manual testing. Update 1 also supports cross-browser testing, with the ability to record web tests in Internet Explorer and then later replay them with most modern browsers. Using Test Explorer, you can group and run tests based on their traits (Test Category, Test Property, Priority, and Owner). You can also pause and resume manual test sessions in Microsoft Test Manager, and automatically create an image log of all actions performed during an exploratory testing session.

KB2797915: Description of Visual Studio 2012 Update 1

Visual Studio 2012 Releases

You can view all versions of Visual Studio 2012 release notes: