Release Candidate for Visual Studio 2012 and TFS 2012 Available

Wow!  The Release Candidate for Visual Studio 2012 and Team Foundation Server 2012 are now available on MSDN Subscriber Downloads!  The final marketing names for the former Visual Studio “11” and TFS “11” (as codenames) have been announced with this announcement as well!

• Visual Studio 2012
• Team Foundation Server 2012

As Jason Zander mentioned, that means that the final RTM release will be sometime this calendar year!  Check out the new logo too!

Visual Studio 2012 also received a face lift with added “energy” when compared to the Beta release.  I think it is looking pretty sharp now!

I won’t go into all of the details of each of the new features introduced in the Release Candidate since there are several folks that have done a great job.  What I am a fan of that I’m super glad made it into the release is a new feature of Team Foundation Server 2012 when upgrading for enabling new features in team projects without having to immediately upgrade process templates for each existing team project.  Ewald Hofman (former Microsoft MVP in Visual Studio ALM) was able to document this new feature in two great new blog posts:

• Deep Dive on Configure Features
• How to Configure Features for Dozens of Team Projects after Upgrade

Check out more coverage here:

• Brian Harry
• Visual Studio Product website
• Eclipse update site for the latest Team Explorer Everywhere preview or the download page
• Overall summary of changes since the Beta
• For filing bugs: Visual Studio and TFS, LightSwitch, or Blend Connect sites
• For asking questions: Visual Studio and TFS or Windows forums
• Jason Zander
• S. Somasegar
• Scott Hanselman

There will not be an RC-specific version of the TFS 2012 Power Tools but the Beta release will continue to work with the new version.

Enjoy!

Ed Blankenship