Actually there's a lot of articles how to use this feature, including tutorials how to detect bottlenecks in D3D app.

It also has pixel debugging and vertex debugging (though I failed to find how to debug specific vertex, it always debugs first one for me), which allows to step through HLSL code and see values of all variables.

That's pretty neat, but somehow feels out of place... I'll take it!

Which editions of VS 2012 will include these tools?
Will it also be included in the express editions?

Currently Visual Studio 2012 is in Beta stages, which is free Ultimate (probably cannot be used for commercial software).

I think these features will be available only in Ultimate version, Professional might offer partial features.

I have been playing with the shader compiling in the release version of VS2012 (c++) and I think it is a little bit clunky with how they set it up.

Controlling the compiling options is done through the build property sheets, like compiling anything else. This is good in some ways and I find annoying in others.

The good, you can set up some property sheets for your project that ensure you compile the shaders the same way. Things like the shader model, whether you want optimizations and debug information.

What I find clunky is that the file level properties are also done through the property sheet. You need to specify the type of shader (vertext, pixel, etc) on the file level property sheet. Sort of annoying is that because this is a property sheet change, the entire project recompiles after changing that.

Worse, for file level properties, is that the property sheets are specific to your Configuration/Platform combinations. So you need to go into the file properties on each one: Debug|x86 -> Pixel Shader, Release|x86 -> Pixel Shader, Debug|x64 -> Pixel Shader, Release|x64 -> PIxel Shader (for each shader). Properties like that aren't going to change per Config/Platform and stuffing them in there feels a bit clunky. If you aren't using a consistent entry point name across all your shaders you would also have to specify this on a per file, per config/platform basis -- this one is at least easy to deal with (make them all the same).