How to upgrade Visual Studio 2015 RC to RTM

Question

According to the answers in this question, upgrading from RC to RTM is a supported and tested upgrade path. Now that VS 2015 RTM is out I want to do exactly that. However, I can't find out the interface menu to do it.

How do I upgrade Visual Studio Community 2015 RC to the RTM version?

Answer 1

After several hours, it put up a menu requiring me to restart and remove the previous version of C++ 2015 Redistributable x64 and x86. Apparently, it might be better to remove these before starting the upgrade. I hesitated to perform the upgrade due to the confirmed reports that Intel C++ will not necessarily work with -std=c++11 or c++14 and vs2015u2 until the future update 16.0.3 is available. I have confirmed with a test installation that I had no such problem in the absence of c++11 or c++14 option usage.

Answer 2

I just did this today - I installed the RTM version of Visual Studio Community 2015.

All I had to do was download the installer file and it went through and updated everything to the RTM version. The only issue I had was missing Intellisense, so I had to close Visual Studio and run the ResetUserData flag. After I did that, Intellisense started working again.

Full Command (Start -> Run): devenv.exe /ResetUserData

This doesn't open VS, but it cleared the data and I was able to restart...a few compatibility checker errors popped up, but I'm back running. Customization are gone, but for me it's not a big deal to start fresh.

Update: For those also using ReSharper, I had to upgrade to the latest version (from 9.0 to 9.0 update 1) get it fully working. I ended up disabling it though as performance was suffering greatly. I will try investigating further later.

Update 2: I directed my coworker to update to the latest version, he received an error that he had a pre-release version of VS Web Express. We uninstalled the web express and we were able to continue.

Update 3: I'm no longer having any issues. I believe ReSharper pushed out another update and everything seems fairly smooth. ReSharper Version 9.1.3. There might be a few things here and there, but nothing that has been cause for me to regret upgrading. Pretty typical stuff. So far the reward has outweighed the risk. +1 to upgrade to VS 2015.

I've done this upgrade on two of my machines with no issues two of my own machines, and directed two other acquaintances to upgrade as well.

Answer 3

I used the ISO to install VS 2015 CE RTM on my Win 10 Build 10240 system where VS 2015 CE RC was already installed. Everything installed/updated with no issues (so far) in limited testing.

Answer 4

Looks like you have to uninstall RC and then install RTM. The Web Installer refuses to install due to the presence of the pre-release version on the machine. At least it does for me.

Answer 5

If you're actively developing an UWP, you might want to wait:

http://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2015/06/29/release-dates-and-compatibility-visual-studio-2015-and-windows-10-sdk/

Otherwise, you should be able to dl the web installer and have it upgrade.