Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 CTP 1 Available

Do NOT install the CTP on a production server (TFS, Release Management, etc.), you cannot upgrade to future CTPs or releases, nor can you uninstall a CTP to go back to your previous release. 

Visual Studio CTPs can of course be upgraded so feel free to update your workstation unless you are working with LightSwitch and Cloud Business Applications those are not supported with this CTP release.  If you use Blend you will have to Repair your installation of Visual Studio after the CTP install to get the correct version of Blend again.

If you are itching to try the new features in Update 2 I recommend you download the latest virtual machine and install the CTPs.  The new features in Team Foundation Server 2013 Update 2 CTP 1 are as follows:

• The portfolio backlogs have performance improvements during web access navigation.
• You can query on tags in Visual Studio and through web access.
• You can apply tags to work items in Visual Studio.
• You can apply permissions for who can add new tags.
• REST API is available for work item tracking tagging.
• You can edit tags in the Excel add-in for Team Foundation Server.
• You can configure non-working days, and these are excluded from burndown charts.
• Cumulative Flow Diagram start dates are configurable.
• Lightweight charts can be pinned to project or team homepages.
• You can customize the colors in lightweight charts.
• The look and feel of the project and team homepage is updated.

Release Management also got some great improvements:

• The Tags are designed to perform the same operation across the servers. If there are server specific actions, the user can always add the specific server and the corresponding actions at that level in the deployment sequence.
• To configure a group of server by using same tag implies that you can set values for the whole group and all the servers in the group therefore share common values for all variables.
• You can easily deploy to identical or clustered servers without having to repeat the deployment sequence on each server.
• You can Copy Tags across stages and across Templates.  You can retain the same deployment sequence with all the tags and servers when copied to other stages or Release templates under the same environment.

You can of course get more details of what is included in Update 2 CTP 1 here.

In Visual Studio 2013 you get the following improvements:

Profiler

IntelliTrace

• You can load the SQL statement in a new query window and run a test execution plan in Visual Studio rather than needing to open and use other tools such as SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS).
• You can see problems that are collected by the MMA grouped. This helps to easily identify key problems from many instances.
• Group the performance events by entry point and by the slowest node. This will reduce the overall number of rows and make it easier to identify a specific event to investigate.
• Add a hotpath indicator to the Perf Event Details for each of the slowest nodes
• In Visual Studio Ultimate 2013, when you use TFGit as a source control system, you can access the deployed version of the solution by opening the iTrace file that is generated by the Microsoft Monitoring Agent.
• FIXED: A Security.VerificationException is raised on a custom event handler if IntelliTrace is enabled.
• FIXED: Visual Studio crashes when loading a corrupted IntelliTrace file.

Code Analysis

• FIXED: Visual Studio 2013 Code Analysis check-in policy does not trigger on websites.

Please pay special attention to the known issues section of the KB Article.