Reputation: 7077

Is the just released Visual Studio 2019 a preview version?

Just realised that the new VS 2019 is released and am thinking of downloading it.

Then I found there 2 URLs:

https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/
https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/preview/

I chose Community version to download and the both pages re-directed me to this URL:

https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/thank-you-downloading-visual-studio/?sku=Community&rel=16

So just wonder has the GA (General Availability, or Release to General Public version, don't really know what is the term to use) version released?

Upvotes: 0

Answers (3)

Jazimov

Reputation: 13282

Edit 02: The April 09 16.0.1 update to Visual Studio 2019 corrects the "RC" designation, along with some other fixes. For some unknown reason, those fixes (available from the VS 2019 Help | Check for updates... menu option) require a 865 MB download that took quite a bit of time to acquire from Microsoft (at 5 MB/sec on a >11 GB internet connection...) and then install.

Edit 01:

It is my opinion that the April 2, 2019 release of Visual Studio 2019 is quite buggy, and I'm not alone (see https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/visual-studio-2019-code-faster-work-smarter-create-the-future/#).

One annoyance is that it installs itself as "Visual Studio 2019 RC":

Microsoft says it's aware of this, but it makes you wonder, how could that happen? This makes it even more confusing as to whether the just-released version is the actual RTM version--but it is.

Use the new IDE with caution--perhaps wait until at least a few updates...

It is confusing.

The answer to your post's question is "no". The just-released (April 2, 2019) version of Visual Studio 2019 is NOT a preview version--it is the official RTM (release to manufacturing) version of Visual Studio 2019. Microsoft officially launched Visual Studio 2019 on April 2, 2019.

The preview versions were released on these dates:

Visual Studio 2019 Preview 1: Dec 04, 2018

Visual Studio 2019 Preview 2: Jan 23. 2019

Visual Studio 2019 Preview 3: Feb 14. 2019

Visual Studio 2019 Preview 4: Feb 26, 2019

To download any version of the official new Visual Studio 2019 release, go to: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/

To see information related to the Visual Studio 2019 launch, go to: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs2019-launch/

Upvotes: 1

LxL

Reputation: 1948

Yes, Visual Studio 2019 is officially released on April 2, 2019.

You can view the released notes here

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/releases/2019/release-notes#GA

I can see what your confusion about.

In recent years, Microsoft has been taking the approach of making the early "preview" version easily accessible to user to collection early feedback from limit set of developers who are willing to live on the edge. The Preview stream is the version that will be promoted to the GA stream once it's been tested by the developer community. (Please do not be confuse with the Community SKU)

As other answers have pointed out. You can choose to use either streams. If you want to be adventurous use this

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/releases/2019/release-notes-preview

If you want to be something stable, in the other words, GA. Use this

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/releases/2019/release-notes

Upvotes: 2