The upcoming copy and paste feature in action.

The slow march toward the public release of Microsoft's first update to its Windows Phone 7 system software is one step closer to fruition.

At the top of the PPCGeeks Podcast last night, Brandon Watson, who is Microsoft's director of developer relations, announced that the company today would be seeding a new version of the Windows Phone Developer Tools to registered Windows Phone 7 developers.

Included in the update are things like the long-awaited copy and paste feature, and a performance improvement for application load times. The tools give developers a chance to test their applications for compatibility, but also signal that the update is closer to getting into the hands of end users.

During the podcast, Watson also said that the Developer Tools software was on track to pass a million downloads since its introduction at last year's Mix conference. That's no small feat considering Microsoft's most recent tally of registered phone developers was north of 24,000.

Microsoft still has yet to nail down a specific date for a consumer release of the software upgrade. During a phone interview with CNET last week, Greg Sullivan, senior product manager for Windows Phone 7 was still going with the within "the next few months" estimate the company had provided at CES.