Microsoft Corp. Tuesday announced the general availability of Visual Studio 2017, the latest version of its flagship integrated development environment platform with new capabilities for building mobile- and cloud-first applications.

The new version of the software enables streamlined cloud development with built-in tools that integrate with .NET Core and Azure applications, microservices, Docker containers and many other services, said Julia Liuson, corporate vice president of Visual Studio at Microsoft, in an announcement.

“It is easier than ever to build and deploy applications and services to Azure, directly from the IDE,” Liuson wrote. “Visual Studio 2017 with Xamarin makes it faster for you to create mobile apps for Android, iOS, and Windows through updates like advanced debugging and profiling tools.”

Microsoft is also touting much greater flexibility in Visual Studio 2017, with both lightweight and modular installation experiences, Liuson said. The enterprises version of the software also comes with Redgate Data Tools that allow developers to integrate databases with their DevOps workflows.

There are many performance improvements too, John Montgomery, director of program management of Visual Studio at Microsoft, said in a second blog post. For example, Visual Studio 2017 now starts up three times faster, project load times are four times faster, and build speeds on C++ projects are also noticeably quicker, Montgomery wrote.

Microsoft has also released the fourth Visual Studio for Mac preview alongside this release, with various performance boosts, bug fixes, updated support for .NET Core projects and better NuGet and mobile tooling. The Visual Studio Mobile Center preview also gets an update, with support for mobile apps built with the React Native and Xamarin programming languages.

Finally, Microsoft released Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2017 Update 1, which is a solution for managing software source code. The updated version comes with several new features aimed at on-premises developments, including a new process template managing experience, additional repository permission management, pull request improvements, test impact analysis, branch policy improvements and a personalized home.

Image: Microsoft