Building Testing and Debugging

Picking Your Branch

Before starting out, it's important to make sure you are working in the right branch. Here are the main branches you should know about

Branch
master	Our primary branch. Changes here will target Visual Studio 2015 Update 2. If in doubt, this is where you should work, and submit pull requests. [Instructions for Building on Windows](//github.com/dotnet/roslyn/blob/master/docs/contributing/Building, Debugging, and Testing on Windows.md); Instructions for Building on Linux
future	Changes here will target the next major version of Visual Studio. This is where we are doing long-term language development. [Instructions for Building on Windows](//github.com/dotnet/roslyn/blob/future/docs/contributing/Building, Debugging, and Testing on Windows.md); Instructions for Building on Linux
stabilization	When we're getting close to a release of a Visual Studio update, we use this branch to stabilize and limit the churn. You generally shouldn't use this branch unless you have a good reason to do so -- you'll know it if you need it.
update-1	This branch is what we shipped in Visual Studio 2015 Update 1, plus some changes to allow you to build experimental extensions. Pull requests will not be accepted to this branch (they should go to master instead), but this is where you should branch from if you desire to make your own private built that's as close to Update 1 as possible. If you make a change from here, send the pull request to master. [Instructions for Building on Windows](//github.com/dotnet/roslyn/blob/update-1/docs/contributing/Building, Debugging, and Testing on Windows.md)

Once you figure out what branch you are going to work in, get specific instructions on how to build/test/debug by following the respective links in the branch descriptions in the table above.