What’s New in Rider

Solutions start up faster when you open them for the very first time (“cold startup”) and Rider has no information about them. On cold startup, all the projects are loaded twice: first the IDE loads the projects to get the information about each one, then it runs “NuGet restore”, and then, when everything is ready, it loads the projects a second time.

We’ve optimized the first project-loading stage so that Rider fetches only the information it needs for restoring NuGet packages. Our internal metrics show that the new implementation is approximately 40% faster.

In C# 11, class, struct, and record types gained the ability to declare a list of required members. This is the list of all properties and fields that are considered required and must be initialized during the initialization of a type’s instance. Types inherit these lists from their base types automatically, providing a seamless experience that removes boilerplate, repetitive code.

Apart from being aware of the required keyword for members inside a class, struct, or record type, Rider provides additional support for the required keyword:

• There is a required keyword in the code completion.
• Most of the compiler errors and warnings are available.
• The required modifier has been added to the Modifiers order on the Preferences/Settings | Editor | Code Style | C# | Syntax Style page.

We’ve added a new Add initializer for required members quick-fix for cases where you’ve created a type’s object but haven’t initialized the members yet. It automatically generates all of the missing required members for your object – you just need to fill in the members’ values with meaningful data.

• Rider 2022.2 fully supports the new unsigned right shift operator (>>>), including support for user-defined operator >>> overloading.
• Rider 2022.2 supports simplifying the use of Span<char> values as a replacement for string instances, since in C# 11 it's possible to directly pattern-match string constants against the values of type Span<char> and ReadOnlySpan<char>.

Quick-fixes which come from Structural Search And Replace (SSR) patterns can now be applied in the scope of a file, folder, project, or entire solution. It affects user custom patterns, Rider built-in code inspections, and the corresponding fixes based on the SSR.

We’ve implemented a way to apply the same window layout settings to all of the solutions you work on. If, for instance, you move a tool window to the right, that’s where it will be for all your solutions.

This behavior will be the default if you’re new to Rider. Otherwise, you can enable it in the main menu by selecting Windows | Layout Settings | Use the Same Layout for All Projects.

In this release, we’ve redesigned how solution configurations are shown. Projects such as Unity, Unreal Engine, or Xamarin often have a lot of configurations, targets, and platforms. Previously, combinations of all these entities produced a huge number of items in the Solution Configurations menu. Starting with the 2022.2 release, you no longer have to look through a long list of items to select the exact combination of configuration, target, and platform. You can simply click on each parameter type one by one until you’ve selected the desired combination.

In response to community feedback, we’ve made it possible to change the width of the Run/Debug widget on the main toolbar. If there is space available on the toolbar to extend the Run/Debug widget, you can drag the left-hand corner of the widget icon and resize it. This means you can create more space for the widget when you want or need it.

We’ve introduced an early preview of our .NET Multiplatform App UI (.NET MAUI) support. In this release, we support projects that target the Android and iOS platforms. You can use run configurations to run and debug your project, as well as to deploy your application to a target device. Please note that macOS, Mac Catalyst, Blazor Hybrid, and WinUI aren’t fully supported yet.

Learn more: macOS Environment Setup for MAUI Development

We’ve implemented the Safe Delete refactoring on a project level. You can invoke it with the Delete key or with the Refactor This action on a project in Solution Explorer. Rider will search for usages of the selected project. If there are any usages, conflicts will be shown, and if not, the project will be deleted and Rider will remove any leftover references or imports. There’s an option to remove a project without these checks, as well – just uncheck the Search for usages option when the Safe Delete dialog is shown and Rider won't run this search.

Rider 2022.2 makes working with filtered solutions much easier for you. You can now filter a project, a set of projects, a solution folder, or even all projects out of the resulting solution. To do so, use the Solution Filter | Remove project action in the context menu on a project, a solution folder, or the root solution node in the Solution Explorer view. To see what projects were filtered out, enable the Show All Files mode in the Solution Explorer view and use the Solution Filter | Add Project action in the context menu.

The Assembly Explorer provides a better presentation for the ReadyToRun (R2R) and NGen assemblies:

• The way ReadyToRun (R2R) and NGen assemblies are presented in the Assembly Explorer has been improved. A small processor-looking icon, as well as ngen or R2R labels, are now displayed next to each assembly's name.
• The Metadata tree has the ReadyToRun header.

New Unreal Module

Creating a new module with game logic comes with a long list of chores: add a folder, add a Build.cs file to the folder, create a class that initializes the module, update the .uproject and Target.cs files, and so on. Rider now has an action to help you automate these tasks: Add | New Unreal Module.

Learn more

New Unreal Plugin

If you’ve ever tried creating new plugins in Unreal Editor, this new action will look familiar to you. Now you can create different types of plugins right from Rider – just use the Add | New Unreal Plugin action and it will generate all the necessary files for the new plugin.

Learn more

Symbol Servers

When debugging, the library symbols may not always be available on your local machine. In this case, you can use symbol servers. In Rider on Windows, you can now configure the debugger to use the symbol server of your choice.

Learn more

Support for Spec tests

Rider now supports Spec tests from the Unreal Engine automation testing framework. If you have a set of tests defined in the Define method after the DEFINE_SPEC macro or the BEGIN_DEFINE_SPEC and END_DEFINE_SPEC macros, Rider will successfully discover them, so you can run and observe them in the Unit Tests view.

Emplace-like function calls

Rider now understands that Emplace-like function calls (such as TArray<..>::Emplace) imply object construction, so it will warn you about invalid arguments passed to the constructor. You can see parameter name hints and parameter info while typing arguments. You can also go to a constructor definition directly from an Emplace call, and vice versa.

• A new toolbar is available for Unity projects, and the connection status is now shown in the toolbar instead of the status bar. Additionally, the play/pause/step buttons have been removed from the toolbar by default, but can be added back.
• We’ve added inspections to ensure the return values of Mathf methods are used.
• You no longer have to restart the Unity Editor to launch the profiling process. The profiler can now attach to and detach from running Unity processes.

We’ve added a coverage summary indicator to the editor. This can be helpful if you find the red and green highlighting produced by the dotCover plugin overwhelming – the new tool is much less obtrusive. Look for the shield-shaped icon in the Inspections widget. The color and fill reflect the code coverage of the current document, and clicking on it will navigate you through the statements that are not covered.

It’s now possible to easily generate tables of contents in Markdown files based on the document headers. This new action is available from the Insert and Generate pop-up menus that you can invoke via the Alt+Insert shortcut or with a right click. Rider will insert a table of contents at the current caret position and enclose it with <!-- TOC --> tags, so that you can update it later by calling the same menu.

We’ve been working on support for Angular 14 in Rider. The most important addition we’ve made in this release is support for Angular standalone components. Rider 2022.2 properly recognizes components, directives, and pipes marked as standalone: true.

Rider 2022.2 provides better support for Vue 3. For example, it now understands type narrowing in v-if/else directives. Also, support for Pinia, the Vue team’s recommended state management solution that works as a global store, has been improved. Both completion and resolve now work in Vue with Pinia library and you can navigate to state properties and actions defined in the store.

Rider 2022.2 comes bundled with TypeScript 4.7, supporting new language features like moduleSuffixes and ESM in Node.js. It will automatically insert the .js extension to the import statement if module is set to node16 or nodenext in your tsconfig.json file. Additionally, Rider supports the typesVersions field in package.json files.

Learn more: What's New in WebStorm 2022.2

• We’ve introduced two new resolve modes: Playground and Script. You can find more information on the differences between the two in this blog article.
• Windows authentication is once again available for Microsoft SQL servers.
• Collations and charsets are now generated with the table’s DDL for Microsoft SQL Server.
• Rider now offers basic support for 3 additional databases: DuckDB, Mimer SQL, and Apache Ignite.

Learn more: What's New in DataGrip 2022.2