Microsoft announces the general availability of Live Share and brings it to Visual Studio 2019

Microsoft yesterday announced that Live Share is now generally available and now comes included in Visual Studio 2019. This release comes with a lot of updates based on the feedbacks the team got since the public preview of Live Share started including a read-only mode, support for C++ and Python, and more.

What is Live Share?

Microsoft first introduced Live Share at Connect 2017 and launched its public preview in May 2018. It is a tool that enables your to collaborate with your team on the same codebase without needing to synchronize code or to configure the same development tools, settings, or environment.

You can edit and debug your code with others in real time, regardless what programming languages you are using or the type of app you are building. It allows you to do a bunch of different things like instantly sharing your project with a teammate, share debugging sessions, terminal instances, localhost web apps, voice calls, and more.

With Live Share, you do not have to leave the comfort of your favorite tools. You can take the advantage collaboration while retaining your personal editor preferences. It also provides developers their own cursor so that to enable seamless transition between following one another.

What’s new in Live Share?

This release includes features like  read-only mode, support for more languages like C++ and Python, and enabled guests to start debugging sessions. Now, you can use Live Share while pair programming, conducting code reviews, giving lectures and presenting to students and colleagues, or even mob programming during hackathons.

This release also comes with support for a few third-party extensions to improve the overall experience when working with Live Share. The two extensions are OzCode and CodeStream. OzCode offers a suite of visualizations like datatips to see how items are passed through a LINQ query. It provides heads-up display to show how a set of boolean expressions evaluates. With CodeStream, you can create discussions about your codebase, which will serve as an integrated chat feature within a LiveShare session.

To read the updates in Live Share, check out the official announcement.

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