Table of Contents
Introducing Visual Studio Code
When and Why Visual Studio Code
Installing and Configuring Visual Studio Code
Installing Visual Studio Code on Windows
Installing Visual Studio Code on macOS
Installing Visual Studio Code on Linux
Localization Support
Updating Visual Studio Code
Previewing Features with Insiders Builds
Summary
The Welcome Page
The Code Editor
Reordering, Resizing, and Zooming Editor Windows
The Status Bar
The Activity Bar
The Side Bar
The Explorer Bar
The Search Tool
The Git Bar
The Debug Bar
The Extensions Bar
The Settings Button
Navigating Between Files
The Command Palette
The Panels Area
The Problems Panel
The Output Panel
The Debug Console Panel
Working with the Terminal
Summary
Language Support
Working with C# and C++
Basic Code Editing Features
Working with Text
Syntax Colorization
Delimiter Matching and Text Selection
Code Block Folding
Multicursors
Reusable Code Snippets
Word Completion
Minimap Mode
Whitespace Rendering and Breadcrumbs
Markdown Preview
Evolved Code Editing
Working with IntelliSense
Parameter Hints
Inline Documentation with Tooltips
Go To Definition
Find All References
Peek Definition
Renaming Symbols and Identifiers
Live Code Analysis
Summary
Visual Studio Code and Project Systems
Working with Individual Files
Creating Files
File Encoding, Line Terminators, and Line Browsing
Working with Folders and Projects
Opening a Folder
Opening .NET Core Solutions
Opening JavaScript and TypeScript Projects
Opening Loose Folders
Working with Workspaces
Creating Workspaces
Opening Existing Workspaces
Workspace Structure
Summary
Customizations and Extensions Explained
Customizing Visual Studio Code
Theme Selection
Customizing the Environment
Customizing Key Bindings
Summary
Installing Extensions
Extension Recommendations
Useful Extensions
Managing Extensions
Configuring Extensions
Hints About Extension Authoring
Summary
Source Control in Visual Studio Code
Downloading Other Source Control Providers
Managing Repositories
Initializing a Local Git Repository
Creating a Remote Repository
Handling File Changes
Staging Changes
Managing Commits
Working with the Git Command Line Interface
Creating and Managing Branches
Switching to a Different Branch
Merging from a Branch
Deleting Branches
Adding Power to the Git Tooling with Extensions
Git History
GitLens
GitHub Pull Requests
Working with Azure DevOps and Team Foundation Server
Summary
Understanding Tasks
Tasks Types
Running and Managing Tasks
The Default Build Task
Auto-Detected Tasks
Configuring Tasks
Running Files with a Default Program
Summary
Creating Applications
Creating .NET Core Projects
Creating Projects on Other Platforms
Debugging Your Code
Configuring the Debugger
Managing Breakpoints
Debugging an Application
Supporting Azure, Docker, and Artificial Intelligence
Summary
Index
Introduction
One of the most common requirements in software development today is building applications and services that run on multiple systems and devices, especially with the continued expansion of cloud and artificial intelligence services. Developers have many options to build cross-platform and cross-device software, from languages to development platforms and tools. However, in most cases such tools rely on proprietary systems, therefore creating strong dependencies. Moreover, most development tools target specific platforms and development scenarios. Microsoft Visual Studio Code makes a step forward, by providing a fully featured development environment for Windows, macOS, and Linux that not only offers advanced coding features but also integrated tools that span across the entire application life cycle from coding to debugging to team collaboration. In this book, developers with any skill will learn how to leverage Visual Studio Code to target scenarios such as web, cloud, and mobile development with the programming language of their choice, providing guidance to build apps for any system and any device.
Visual Studio Code is not just another evolved notepad with syntax colorization and automatic indentation. Instead, it is a very powerful code-focused development environment expressly designed to make it easier to write web, mobile, and cloud applications using languages that are available to different development platforms and to support the application development life cycle with a built-in debugger and with integrated support to the popular Git version control engine.
With Visual Studio Code, you can work with individual code files or with structured file systems based on folders. This chapter provides an introduction to Visual Studio Code giving you information on when and why you should use it, as well as about installing and configuring the program on the different supported operating systems.
Visual Studio Code has been the first cross-platform development tool in the Microsoft Visual Studio family that runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS. It is free, open source ( github.com/Microsoft/vscode ), and it is definitely a code-centric tool, which makes it easier to edit code files and folder-based project systems as well as writing cross-platform web and mobile applications over the most popular platforms, such as Node.js and .NET Core, with integrated support for a huge number of languages and rich editing features such as IntelliSense, finding symbol references, quickly reaching a type definition, and much more.
Visual Studio Code is based on Electron ( electronjs.org/ ), a framework for creating cross-platform applications with native technologies, and combines the simplicity of a powerful code editor with the tools a developer needs to support the application life cycle development, including debuggers and version control integration based on Git. It is therefore a complete development tool, rather than being a simple code editor. For more advanced coding and development, you will certainly consider Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 on Windows and Visual Studio for Mac on macOS, but Visual Studio Code can be really helpful in many situations.
In this book, you learn how to use Visual Studio Code and how to get the most out of it, seeing how you can use it both as a powerful code editor and as a complete environment for end-to-end development. Except where necessary, figures are based on the Microsoft Windows 10 operating system, but there is no difference on Linux and macOS. Also, Visual Studio Code includes a number of color themes that style its layout. In this book, figures are based on the so-called Visual Studio Light Theme, so you might see different colors. Chapter 5, “Customizing Visual Studio Code,” explains how to change the theme, but if you want to be consistent with the book’s figures, simply select File ➤ Preferences ➤ Color Theme and select the Visual Studio Light Theme. It is worth mentioning that the theme you select does not affect at all the features described in this book.
Before you learn how to use Visual Studio Code, what features it offers, and how it provides an improved code editing experience, you have to clearly understand its purpose. Visual Studio Code is not a simple code editor; rather it is a powerful environment that puts writing code at its center. The main purpose of Visual Studio Code is making it easier to write code for web, mobile, and cloud platforms for any developers working on different operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, and macOS, making you independent from proprietary development environments.
For a better understanding, let’s consider an example based on ASP.NET Core, the cross-platform, open source technology able to run on Windows, Linux, and macOS that Microsoft produced to create portable web applications; forcing you to build cross-platform, portable web apps with Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 would make you dependent on this Integrated Development Environment (IDE). You could argue that the Visual Studio 2017 Community edition is free of charge, but it only runs on Windows. On the contrary, though it is not certainly intended to be a replacement for more powerful and complete environments such as its major brother, Visual Studio Code can run on a variety of operating systems and can manage different project types, as well as the most popular languages. To accomplish this, Visual Studio Code provides the following core features:
Built-in support for coding with many languages, including those you typically use in cross-platform development scenarios, with advanced editing features and support for additional languages via extensibility Built-in debugger for Node.js, with support for additional debuggers (such as .NET Core and Mono) via extensibility Version control based on the popular Git engine, which provides an integrated experience for collaboration supporting code commits and branches, and that is the proper choice for a tool intended to work with possibly any language.
In order to properly combine all these features into one tool, Visual Studio Code provides a coding environment based on folders, which makes it easy to work with code files that are not organized within projects and offers a unified way to work with different languages. Starting from this assumption, Code offers an advanced editing experience with features that are common to any supported languages, plus some features that are available to specific languages. As you learn throughout the book, Code also makes it easy to extend its built-in features by supplying custom languages, syntax coloring, editing tools, debuggers, and much more via a number of extensibility points. It is a code-centric tool, with primary focus on web, cross-platform code. That said, it does not provide all of the features you need for full, more complex application development and application life cycle management and is not intended to be the proper choice with some development platforms. If you have to make a choice, consider the following points:
Visual Studio Code can produce binaries and executable files only if the language you use has support to do so through a debugger. If you use a language for which there is no extensive support (e.g., Visual Basic), Visual Studio Code is not able to invoke a compiler. You can workaround this by implementing task automation, discussed in Chapter 8, "Automating Tasks," but this is different than having the compilation process integrated.
Visual Studio Code has no designers, so creating an application’s user interface can only be done by writing all of the related code manually. As you can imagine, this is fine with some languages and for some scenarios, but it can be very complicated with some kinds of applications and development platforms, especially if you are used to work with the powerful graphical tools available in Microsoft Visual Studio.
It is a general purpose tool and is not the proper choice for specific development scenarios such as building Windows desktop applications.
If your requirements are different, consider instead Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 or Microsoft Visual Studio for Mac, which are optimized for building, testing, deploying, and maintaining multiple types of applications.
Now that you have a cleaner idea of Code’s goals, you are ready to learn the amazing editing features that put it on the top of any other code editor.
