News For Dev-ops

Some time ago, I explained why Windows has trouble finding Win32 resources with accented characters . It boils down to an ambiguity in the Portable Executable specification: It says that the names are treated as case-insensitive, but it does not specify which case-insensitive comparison algorithm to use. The Resource Compiler uses the C locale (which considers the lowercase Latin letters a-z to be counterparts to the uppercase Latin letters A-Z), whereas the resource subsystem uses the user's current locale's case mapping table (which can vary from user to user, but which usually considers lowercase accented letters to be equivalent to the same accent applied to the uppercase version of the lowercase base character). Commenter Jan Ringoš wondered if this could be fixed and offered a few possibilities. The first option is to change the behavior of Find­Resource to use the C locale first and then use the user locale if there is no match according to the C locale. "I don...

Amazon EMR Serverless makes it simple to run open-source big data analytics frameworks without configuring, managing, and scaling clusters or servers. Today, we are excited to announce support for specifying permissions inline when submitting a job run. This allows you to define fine-grained, tenant-specific permission scopes per job run for multi-tenant use cases. When submitting a job run on EMR Serverless, you can specify a runtime role that the job run can assume when calling other AWS services. In multi-tenant environments, such as those managed by SaaS providers, job runs are often submitted on behalf of specific tenants. To ensure security and least privileges, it is necessary to scope down the permissions of the runtime role to the specific context of a tenant for a given job run. Achieving this requires creating a separate role for each tenant with restricted permissions. The proliferation of such roles can push the account limits of IAM as well as get unwieldy to manage. No...

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) continues to evolve, and we're excited to announce that the MCP C# SDK now supports the latest specification version 2025-06-18 . This update brings significant new capabilities to .NET developers building AI applications, including an improved authentication protocol, elicitation support, structured tool output, and support for resource links in tool responses. Whether you're building AI assistants, automation tools, or integrating AI capabilities into existing .NET applications, these new features will help you create more robust and secure solutions. Here's a rundown of the new features and how to access them with the MCP C# SDK. Improved Authentication Protocol The 2025-06-18 specification introduces a new authentication protocol that enhances security and flexibility for AI applications. The new protocol separates the roles of authentication server and resource server, allowing easier integration with existing OAuth 2.0 and OpenID ...

We’ve been thrilled to see so many of you jump back into your Pluralsight benefit after our April 3rd announcement about extended access. Your enthusiasm for learning and leveling up with Visual Studio inspires us every day. If you haven’t had a chance to dive in yet—or want to explore what’s new since then—I wanted to share an update on some exciting new courses and paths that we think you’ll find especially valuable. More Time to Learn, More Ways to Grow Visual Studio developers on a paid Professional or Enterprise subscription unlock exclusive learning opportunities—Professional subscribers receive 6 months of complimentary Pluralsight access, while Enterprise subscribers get a full 12 months. That’s even more time to immerse yourself in expert-led courses, hands-on labs, and certification prep, all tailored to the latest Microsoft technologies. Why does this matter? Because we know how busy developers are juggling projects, deadlines, and meetings. Pluralsight offers you the flex...

This post walks through how to implement a "build once, deploy everywhere" pattern using Azure Developer CLI (azd) that provisions environment-specific infrastructure and promotes applications from dev to prod with the same build artifacts. You'll learn how to use conditional Bicep deployment, environment variable injection, package preservation across environments, and automated CI/CD promotion from development to production. Environment-Specific Infrastructure When deploying applications across environments, different requirements emerge: Component Development Production Networking Public access VNet integration + Private endpoints Storage Public with restrictions Private endpoints only App Service Plan B2 Basic S1 Standard Security Managed identity Enhanced network isolation Rather than maintaining separate infrastructure templates or complex configuration files for each environment, we can use a single set of Bicep files that adapt ...

The C++/WinRT library provides the winrt:: resume_ foreground() function for resuming a coroutine on the foreground thread of a dispatcher. It supports three types of dispatchers: Windows. UI. Core. CoreDispatcher , Windows. System. DispatcherQueue , Microsoft. UI. Dispatching. DispatcherQueue . But what happens if the thread switch fails? This happens if the dispatcher thread is no longer accepting new work, either because it is shutting down, or because it no longer exists at all. If a Core­Dispatcher is unable to dispatch a work item, it silently releases the work item without executing it. For winrt:: resume_ foreground() , that means that your coroutine appears to hang. The resumption never happens, nothing in the coroutine executes beyond the co_await winrt:: resume_ foreground( core­Dispatcher) , and your coroutine is leaked. If either of the Dispatcher­Queue objects is unable to dispatch a work item, then the Try­Enqueue() method returns false . The winrt:: resume_ foreg...

We’re excited to announce the latest 1.21 release of the CMake Tools extension for Visual Studio Code. This update brings a host of new updates, including addressing one of our top-voted issues for multi-root improvements and adding CMake presets version 10 support . To view the full list of updates with this release, please look at our  CHANGELOG . This release features the following ten contributions from our open-source community. Thank you for your continued support! Allow specifying a launch configuration which can be used when debugging tests via CTest by @nerixyz Adding a new command cmake.cacheVariable by @malsyned Grouping default build targets based on CMake FOLDER property by @itzandroidtab Add name de-mangling for C++ symbols in the Test Explorer view by @rjaegers Fixes to case preservation for include paths on MacOS by @tringenbach Reduce heap usage with new optimized splits for large compile commands by @borjamunozf Remove dependency for backtrace in pr...