Visual Studio 15 vs 2015 + Update 2

I can choose from two possibilities of new Visual Studio installation

  • Visual Studio 15 Preview
  • Visual Studio 2015 + Update 2

But I'm a little bit confused what do these versions mean.

  • What are the main differences?
  • What version is better to choose?
  • Can I expect that all the features in VS 15 are available in VS 2015 + Update 2?
Jon Skeet
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Visual Studio 15 is the version after Visual Studio 2015. The "15" is effectively the mostly-internal version number, and the "2015" is the branding version. Yes, it's very confusing.

Other internal/branding mappings:

  • Visual Studio 97 / "Boston"
  • Visual Studio 6.0 / "Aspen"
  • Visual Studio 7 / "Rainier" => Visual Studio .NET 2002
  • Visual Studio 7.1 / "Everett" => Visual Studio .NET 2003
  • Visual Studio 8 / "Whidbey" => Visual Studio 2005
  • Visual Studio 9 / "Orcas" => Visual Studio 2008
  • Visual Studio 10 / "Rosario" => Visual Studio 2010
  • Visual Studio 11 => Visual Studio 2012
  • Visual Studio 12 => Visual Studio 2013
  • Visual Studio 14 => Visual Studio 2015

Unless you want to experiment with prerelease software (which can be fun, don't get me wrong) you want to install Visual Studio 2015... and update 2 is the most recent release of that.

We don't yet know what the branded name of Visual Studio 15 will be - mostly because we don't know when it's going to be released.

people

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