Think VS2013 means no more VS2012 updates? Think again... VS2012.4 RC 1 is now available (and it's "Go Live" too!)

Brian Harry’s blog - VS 2012.4 (Update 4) will exist!

Sometime this spring, though for the life of me I can’t find it, I wrote a blog post where I said I thought Update 3 (VS/TFS 2012.3) would be the last update in the VS/TFS 2012 update line.  I often say that nothing that is said about the future is more than a guess with varying levels of confidence.  So, it turns out that I was wrong.  A month or two ago we decided that we were going to need to do a 2012.4 release.

The primary motivation is addressing compatibility and migration/round-tripping issues between VS 2012 and VS 2013 and the various platform releases to make adoption of VS 2013 as smooth as possible.  The planned timing will be around the same time VS 2013 releases (and, of course, I can’t give any more detail at this time other than saying that it will be before the end of the year).  Once we decide to ship a release like this, it then becomes a vehicle to deliver anything else that would be valuable/important to deliver in that timeframe.  So, for instance Update 4 will also include a roll up of fixes for all important customer reported by the time it locks down.

Like Update 3, Update 4 will be a very scoped release just focused on these compatibility fixes and key customer impacting bug fixes.  We will not be delivering significant new features in Update 4.  I qualify it with “significant” because what is a feature and what is a bug fix is in the eye of the beholder.

Today we released the first Release Candidate for Update 4....

Here are some resources for RC1:

• VS 2012.4 and related downloads
• VS 2012 Update 4 RC 1 KB Article

..."

Microsoft Downloads - Visual Studio 2012 Update 4 RC 1

This is a release candidate (RC) for Visual Studio 2012 Update 4.

Version: 2012

Date Published:  7/29/2013

• tfs_express.exe, 735 KB
• tfs_server.exe, 735 KB
• VS2012.4 RC TFS Express enu.iso, 483.3 MB
• VS2012.4 RC TFS Server ENU.iso, 1.1 GB
• VS2012.4 RC.exe, 1.3 MB

Visual Studio 2012 Update is providing continuous value to customers, adding new capabilities year-round to features in the main product release. These releases will be aligned with the core software development trends in the market, ensuring developers and development teams always have access to the best solution for building modern applications.

This is a release candidate (RC) for Visual Studio 2012 Update 4. These cumulative updates to Visual Studio 2012 include a variety of bug fixes and capability improvements. More details can be found here.

Statement of Support:
Visual Studio 2012 Update 4 RC and Team Foundation Server 2012 with Update 4 RC are “go-live”. This means that customers can use these builds in production environments. These are still pre-releases, so there may be some bugs that will be fixed for the final release. Upgrade from Update 4 RC to Update 4 RTM is supported. In order to upgrade to future releases, the customer must first upgrade from Update 4 RC to Update 4 RTM.

...

Description of Visual Studio 2012 Update 4 RC 1

Currently looks like mostly TFS and LightSwitch updates...