Latest Productivity Updates in Visual Studio 2017 Update 15.8

The Discussion

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  Awesome! However, was expecting sneak peek at VS2019.

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  Good presentation, learnt a lot new tips and tricks :) thanks Kendra :) 

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  I have tried, several times, to use the new multi-caret feature, Control+Alt+Click. It just does not work for me. I'm using VS 2017 Community Edition, version 15.8.4. Is that feature only available for VS 2017 Professional and/or Enterprise? 

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  @Doctor Who:I ran into this problem just now when it was working a few days ago. However, I installed Productivity Power Tools earlier and here is a known conflict with Ctl+Click-Go to definition. Disabling that makes it work again.

   

  See  Multi-caret editing does not work.

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  Great, thank you

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  I came here to mention what @NewWorldMan said. Also, some of the keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+D for Duplicate, for example) were not working for me because my keyboard mapping was set to Visual C# 2005. Changing it to (Default) fixed it.

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  Great demo Kendra - the enthusiasm really comes across!

   

  Step aside, Mr Guthrie!

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  Thanks all for the positivity! It's so encouraging!

   

  @Amy: Thanks and sorry about not including more! I didn't mean for the description to be misleading! A few things actually got into 15.8 that I wasn't sure would. So, the "preview" features just became the 15.8 features. XD

   

  @NewWorldMan: and @TonyDavis: Thanks for the work arounds!

   

  @Doctor Who: If you have any more issues you can check what shortcut it is set to in Tools > Options > Environment > Keyboard. In the search box that says "Show commands containing" search for "caret". That will list the commands and shortcuts they are set to.

   

   

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  @Doctor Who:I ran into this problem just now when it was working a few days ago. However, I installed Productivity Power Tools earlier and here is a known conflict with Ctl+Click-Go to definition. Disabling that makes it work again.

   

  See  Multi-caret editing does not work.

  I just checked, you are correct. I do have Power Commands for Visual Studio installed. Guess that's what's interfering. I don't remember what, in the Power Tools, the key sequence Control-Alt+Click did. Wondering if I could disable just that and use Multi-Caret?

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  @kandrahavens: I never even knew about the Tools > Options > Environment > Keyboard sequence to see what's assigned to any command involving the word "caret"! It looks to me like the command that should be associated with multi-caret mode is, on my machine, Edit.InsertCaretsatAllMatching. The key sequence is: Ctrl+Shift+Alt+,

  I just tested it. It does seem to work - sort of. I put it at the end of this declaration:

  public long OrderID { get; set; }

  It then inserted multiple carets at the end of all "}" throughout my file. Kinda cute, but not helpful, because I can't specify where to put the carets.

  Testing, I found that disabling the PowerTools doesn't seem to help at all.

  You know what would be helpful? Having some way of entering a key sequence and finding out what command it's associated with.

  Addendum: FWIW, I even uninstalled the Powertools. Doesn't matter to Edit.InsertCaretsatAllMatching. It stubbornly stays associated with the key sequence Ctrl+Shift+Alt+,

  And that key sequence is useless to me. Guess once you involve PowerTools, it's going to insist upon using the key sequences it establishes and will permanently leave it that way, regardless of whether you disable or uninstall it.

  Addendum 2: OK, I discovered that I previously mistook a different extension for the Productivity Power Tools extension. However, now that I've got the correct one in mind, I still found that what I previously described still happened. i.e.: disabling the Power Tools did nothing. Uninstalling the Power Tools did nothing. So, how do I take control and assign Ctrl+Alt+Click to be Edit.InsertCaretsatAllMatching?

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  Visual Studio 15.8.3 and 15.8.4 shuts down web publish. I had to downgrade to 15.7.6 and web publish works again.
  Complaining about a bug does not seem to do anything unless many people have the same problem and at least one have a paid support ticket. :(

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  One thing that annoys me is that there is no basic support for test coverage in professional edition.
  
  We have to resort using some plugins that don't work so well. And no, I don't use resharper and don't plan to use ever again.
  
  Can you please help out a professional and let us have some basic code coverage from unit tests.