Microsoft is making the near-final Release Candidate (RC) of Visual Studio 2022 available. It also announced that November 8 will be the general availability date for VS 2022, which a virtual launch event will mark.

In addition to making the RC of VS 2022 available, Microsoft also is rolling out Preview channel Release 5. The preview channel gives testers a monthly look at what's coming in the next minor version update of the current channel. Both the RC and GA versions of VS 2022 will have go-live licenses, meaning they are ready for production use.

Visual Studio 2022 is the first release of a 64-bit version of Visual Studio. By making Visual Studio 64-bit, officials said that they expect the release to make better use of all system resources, especially when working with more complex solutions over longer periods of time. According to Microsoft, during early VS 2022 testing, customers were able to run the VS IDE for days, even with solutions containing 700 or more projects.

It's going to be a busy November for Microsoft developers. In addition to the VS 2022 launch, Microsoft will be holding a three day .NET Conf 2021 virtual event from November 9 to 11. The highlight of that event will be the launch of .NET 6.

In 2019, Microsoft announced that .NET 5 would be its first major deliverable on the road toward unifying .NET, but .NET 6 is where more of the magic will happen. Microsoft will have completed the unification of the Mono runtime into Core, have one set of base libraries for all workloads and deliver one SDK nd project system across a number of operating systems and device targets with .NET 6. However, .NET MAUI won't be ready at that point; Microsoft now is targeting early Q2 2022 for the GA of .NET MAUI.

Visual Studio 2022 is the first 64-bit version of Visual Studio. In addition to the speed and performance advantages afforded by more memory access, Visual Studio brings UI enhancements, more personalization options, and a continued focus on empowering developers. Also, you can still build 32-bit, and all of your existing applications, in Visual Studio 2022.

Release Candidate (RC) : Before General Availability of Visual Studio 2022, we provide one or more Release Candidate (RC) builds in the Current Channel. You may use Visual Studio 2022 RC in your daily work, including releasing apps built with it.

You may evaluate the Professional and Enterprise Editions without a subscription or product key for 30 days, with a 60-day extension (once per account), if you sign in with a Microsoft or a Work or School account. Once Visual Studio 2022 version 17.0 releases, please upgrade to remain under support.

Release of Visual Studio 2022 version 17.0 Preview 7

Fixed a Visual Studio crash while using 'Menu' controls in Windows Forms .NET Framework designer.
Updated Xamarin.Forms Project Templates to include the latest released versions of Xamarin.Forms (5.0 SR6) and Xamarin.Essentials (1.7.0)
Setting C++ Project to use v142 toolset now works properly.
Fixed Hot Restart deployment error with iOS 15.

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