Visual Studio 2015’s improved support for Edit & Continue (EnC) with C++ provided many enhancements to make it usable on a daily basis. Some limitations remained, frustrating those who wanted to use EnC with their Windows Store apps or FASTLINK.
Microsoft’s Ramkumar Ramesh has provided details on the improvements that VS2015 recent update brings to C++ developers. The first batch of changes deals with some of the rough spots that remained in VS2015 RTM:
- Windows Store and DirectX apps now EnC capable: These project types use the
/bigobjcompiler switch, and now EnC can be used when that switch is specified. - Support for binaries linked with
/DEBUG:FASTLINK: Supporting this means developers no longer face a tradeoff between obtaining faster build times or using EnC in their projects. - Reserved space available for editing has been increased (but is not yet completely configurable): At RTM it was hinted that the amount of reserved space would be configurable, but at present that is still not possible. What has been done is an increase in the memory space so more changes can be made with EnC before running out of memory.
General improvements new to Update 1:
- The compiling notice for EnC is now able to be canceled.
- Notifying a user why a modified file doesn’t support EnC, rather than mysteriously ignoring an edit.
- Reduced chances of the “Stale Code” error occurring.
- Fixed the “fatal error C1092: Edit and Continue does not support changes to data types; build required” false positive.
General user feedback from those who have applied Update 1 is mixed. Some are reporting errors (C1092, provoked by FASTLINK) are still plaguing their projects but it is unclear as to whether these errors are project-specific. In those situations disabling EnC is required to return to a working state. Interested users will find the new options installed as part of VS2015 Update 1.