Microsoft introduces Arm64 support for Visual Studio extensions
After announcing the Arm64 Visual Studio app in June, Microsoft recently launched extension support for the app. This means that developers and users can now write and use extensions in the Arm64 Visual Studio application.
Microsoft has made the process of making your extension Arm64 compatible super easy. First, you need to update the VSSDK Build Tools package to the latest version via NuGet Package Manager, after which adding a ProductArchitecture tag specifying arm64 in the VSIX manifest is required. Finally, you need to define your target CPU architecture: you can select AnyCPU or Arm64 if you want to release an Arm64-exclusive extension. Microsoft shared more information about the process here.
In its official blog post, Microsoft also noted that developers could publish Arm64 and Amd64 versions of their extensions on a single Marketplace entry. However, what remains unchanged is how you upload and publish extensions. If you want to upload your Arm64 extension to an existing extension entry, you need to follow the steps below:
- Navigate to the Manage Editors & Extensions page and click Edit.
- Load the new payload. You also need to ensure that the payload has the same extension ID, version, and different target platform.
- You can now click Download and Save.
After carefully following the steps above, you should see that the extension's homepage offers several download options. Microsoft also shared the suite of extensions to Visual Studio. The software company said it wants to allow extension authors to merge their separate existing extension lists for different VS versions into a single list to further improve extension discovery. So we might hear announcements about that very soon.
If you are an extension developer, are you interested in developing Arm64 extensions for Visual Studio? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section.
