Visual Studio 2019 is now available as a Snap on Linux, allowing for automatic updates and rollback abilities across distros.
Last week, Microsoft officially launched Visual Studio 2019 on Windows and Mac. Those who love some open source needed to wait a little longer, but Microsoft has also brought its developer platform to Linux. VS 2019 is available on the Linux platform as a Snap, which improves updating on open source.
If you are unfamiliar with Snaps, they are created by Canonical and are essentially software packages in a container. Users can leverage Snaps on most Linux distributions and get automatic updates and the ability to rollback versions.
Microsoft has been running Visual Studio Code on Linux since back in 2016, but never as a Snap. By bringing Snap support allows that seamless automatic updating which means Microsoft no longer needs to package separate Linux builds.
As you may expect, Microsoft is late to this party and third-party developers on the Ubuntu community already created a VS Code Snap in 2017. It seems Redmond took note and brought official Snap support for Visual Studio 2019.