Last week Microsoft released the feature specifications for the .NET Framework codenamed "Orcas" and the next version of Visual Studio. Among the more notable additions comes multi-targeting across versions of the .NET Framework, a feature that was noticeably absent from Visual Studio 2005.
John Rivard, VB Architect, provides this reasoning behind the decision:
In juggling priorities, costs, and benefits for Whidbey, the Visual Studio team determined it would be better to continue with a side-by-side toolset strategy than to delve the depths of cross-targeting from a single tool.
Features in the January CTP and specifications posted:
- Folder Diff (TFS)
- Continuous Integration (TFS)
- Large Group Sync (TFS)
- Psuedo Multi-Targetting (Dev Tools)
- VS Proxy Services (Dev Tools)
- VS Settings Migration (Dev Tools)
- Multi-Targetting (C++)
- Versioning of VC++ Libraries (C++)
- ListView (UI Frameworks)
- Partial Page Rendering (UI Frameworks)
- Mapping Format (C#)
- XLinq (C#)
- SystemSettings Extensions (.NET CF)
- Support for Web Application Projects (Team Architect)
