Microsoft has been continuously working on different projects to help its Windows systems better complement the Arm64 architecture. One of the company’s latest developments in this area is the release of Visual Studio 2022 17.4 GA, which now supports Arm64.
“We’re excited to announce the first fully Arm64-enabled version of Visual Studio, which runs natively, allowing Arm64 applications to be built and debugged on Arm-based processors,” Mark Downie, senior product manager at Microsoft, said in announcing the version said in a blog post. “17.4 GA provides a native Arm64 experience for Visual Studio, eliminating the need for emulation in most developer workflows. While the improved x64 emulator has helped emulate the speed and performance of Arm device applications, we know that , the absolute best Arm developer experience will be powered by tools that run natively on Arm64.”
Looking back at history, Microsoft first disclosed Visual Studio’s support for Arm64 during Build 2022 and released it as a preview in June.
At that stage, Downie explained, the team prioritized only the most basic and important workloads and components for developers. However, this official release will now include a wider range of workloads in addition to the native Arm64 performance of the Windows SDK and Win App SDK. These workloads include .NET desktop development, desktop development using C++, ASP.NET and web development, Universal Windows Platform development, Visual Studio extension development, game development using C++, and node.js development.
Additionally, the official build is now available with the recently released Windows Dev Kit 2023 or Project Volterra, which is only available in select markets, including the US, UK, France, Germany, Japan, China, Canada and Australia.
