This release drops back to using older Microsoft visual studio api's avoiding bugs and also giving a better experience to vs2012 and 2013 users. One important fix as a result of using older api's is that "vMicro>Toggle Hidden Files" was prone to crash.

Gdb has also been removed from the main visual micro extension because come important Visual Studio components require different code and api versions for each version of Visual Studio. Instead the are some new optional extensions that work along side visual micro and provide gdb debugging. Working with these new version specific gdb extensions will provide a much more reliable basis for us to build better gdb functionality. If the visual micro gdb extension is not installed then visual studio will show an error message warning that debug can not be started for an unknown reason.

• Some avr intellisense improvements.
• Fix - Serial ports list might have been empty sometimes. Workaround/protect against Windows 10 bug of  duplicate serial ports that caused visual micro not to display any serial ports.
• Fix - When using the Gdb Command Window - Degug.MIExec commands the returned output will correctly show in the command window where as previously the output showed in the "Debug" output window. For example Degug.MIExec help and Degug.MIExec list will show the resulting help or code in the command window below the command that was entered.
• Beta - Download GDB Debugging in Visual Studio 2017. A new light weight extension is available that simply launches the Visual Micro GDB debugger for projects that have a debugger flavor of "VisualMicroDebugger". Launching the debugger in Visual Studio is different for each version which therefore we will produce a separate extension for each version. The main Visual Micro Arduino IDE extension will remain compatible with all supported versions of Visual Studio. gdb aslso requires Android tools for Visual Studio to be installed.
• Fix: Arduino as ISP - Burn bootloader passes serial port to command.
• Fix: Removing all breakpoints from a .cpp (without making any edits to the source) failed to recompile and used the previously cached .o object files instead. A more efficient comparison is now made during file.copy and the LastModifiedDateTime is updated if the latest version of a source file is different from the cached build version.
• Updated: avr intellisense to detect gcc 4.6.2 and 4.6.3. 4.8.1 is also still supported.
• Added: intellisense redefines for the avr pgm_read defines which VS does not understand
• Added: intellisense sense only preprocessor define _VMICRO_INTELLISENSE
• Change: Enclose the vsarduino.h intellisense header source with if defined(_VMICRO_INTELLISENSE) read more
• Automatically disable visual micro in project configurations that contain any of the following defines _WINRT_DLL; _WIN_IOT; _VMICRO_DISABLE
• The above changes ensure that windows IoT projects containing a .ino course file can be compiled without interference from Visual Micro. Creating a new empty project configuration without the above defines will allow visual micro to build a windows 10 IoT project when the configuration is selected. 
• New draft documentation guide to cross-compiling Windows 10 IoT and Arduino projects. How to optionally enable Visual Micro for a specific Configuration and how to create code that arduino.cc or Microsoft IoT will compile.
• Change: Automatic debugging will only be started for projects that have an active configuration name containing the text 'Debug' (not case sensitive). Previous version would enable debug unless the configuration name contained the text "Release". This is designed to prevent users who do not know what debugger is from accidentally enabling debugging.
• 1704.18 - Reversed >> Updated to the latest SharpZip. Hopefully that solves some reported issues unpacking/installing new hardware. (issue report)
• Workaround: Esp8266 debug failed to connect to wifi. If the esp8266 has a 2-3 second delay at the start of the setup() it fails to connect. Visual Micro no longer enforces this delay for esp boards. In fact the delay is only useful for boards such as the Uno which start almost instantly preventing the serial monitor (and debugger) from capture the earliest serial messages.
• Missing last char when reading serial during debug. If serial.print() was used in the arduino code without line terminator the last printed char was missing from the display
• Known bug: Unprocessed debugger packets can sometimes appear in the serial output window. Improved slightly in this release.
• Intellisense and serial debugger support for Adafruit Feather/nrf52 type boards

new gdb hooks

# Gdb override target_selected: fires after the target is selected and prior to halt
#

recipe.hooks.gdb.post_target_selected.1.pattern=monitor arm semihosting enable
recipe.hooks.gdb.post_target_selected.2.pattern=set mem inaccessible-by-default off
recipe.hooks.gdb.post_target_selected.3.pattern=monitor arm reg
recipe.hooks.gdb.post_target_selected.4.pattern=monitor arm semihosting_fileio enable