It was a welcome surprise to go to View->Other Windows and see this. I'll have to update soon to the new version to see the additional features it's gained.
Yes, but I've found it to be lacking usability-wise (e.g. it doesn't load the current project's dependencies, and it doesn't provide an easy way to load in dependencies from your project [someone please correct me if I'm wrong!]).
That's what Update 2 brings: "You can now initialize the C# Interactive Window with a project's context, allowing immediate access to types inside that project."
Immediate is AFAIK a limited subset available during debugging. C# Interactive is what F# has had for years (F# Interactive), and even Mono has had something like this for a while. You can enter snippets of C# and eval like a real REPL. Update 2 brings project context support so you can just open the REPL and do stuff like var x = new MyType().
scriptcs (http://scriptcs.net/) is another awesome REPL for C# that's built on top of Roslyn. I've found it to be extremely flexible and handy for writing quick tools.
Anyone have worked with Cordova? What are the uses cases where I could envision using it (pros, cons)? As I understand it's used to package a Web App into a Mobile specific bundle for deployment?
I used it to repackage an asp mvc angular app onto mobile. Fairly poor experience, like problems with starting up the emulators, etc. You end up writing a lot of gulp scripts to do the conversion - all manual work. I had to convert from old style csproj app onto Cordova that uses project.json scheme - quite tedious if you ask me.
I've been using Visual Studio 2015 Update 1 for Phonegap and Ionic apps and working on files is noticeably slower than other project types such as asp.net mvc. I just end up using the cli to perform tasks but I'm hoping this update along with the git improvements make things better.
The release notes point to a switch to "Salsa" for JS intellisense. Salsa is based on the TS intellisense service (it is run by the TS intellisense service) and the same one used these days by VS Code. At least what I've seen in VS Code, Salsa seems fine with ES2015 import syntax and intellisense. (That said, almost all of my code is TS, so I'm not sure I've hit any specific use cases you are particularly looking for support in.)
They released an ISO for Update 1, so chances are there will be one for Update 2.
In the meantime, you can download the online installer [1] and run
vs2015.2.exe /Layout
to launch the downloader, which should create a folder which contains everything that you would find on the update ISO. (EDIT: This seems to result in a 4.53 GiB download, so definitely smaller than the 6.95 GiB full install ISO.)
Then again... I only have an MSDN subscription because my previous job STILL hasn't removed me from their lists. Not that I expect them to with the clowns they replaced my previous company with.
And even more importantly, claim your product keys! And then download those puppies with the Export to XML option in the My Product Keys page.
Note that you can only claim a limited number of keys per day. So don't get carried away claiming all five keys on one product, then all five on the next, etc. You will soon hit your daily limit. Spread your claims out among the products you think you might need until you run out, and then come back the next day to claim more.
Yeah, this happens to me as well. ReSharper caches a lot of stuff, and with the size of our solution, the memory consumption on VS is crazy. This usually leads to a forced restart so that VS acts normally again.
They don't seem to have fixed much at all, it's still a total dog - massive memory hog, lots of random lock-ups and crashes. The classic is the pop-up telling you it's working on showing you a pop-up. And even introduced new issues (like including files from gitignore in the change-sets). I'm this close (holding fingers very close together) to just dumping the thing for a text editor. VS2015 has been a total car crash as far as I'm concerned.
I use Resharper and don't get this issue (didn't get it on Update 1 either) - if the project file is updated, VS will tell me that the project file is updated and ask me if I want to reload the project.
Note that there's a bug with C++ projects that causes update 2 to crash repeatedly. Microsoft has acknowledged it and says they're working on a fix. It has something to do with accessing managed code.