Visual Studio Code is becoming a standard text editor for developers.
The Microsoft releases of Visual Studio Code are proprietary software with telemetry enabled by default. If you prefer to avoid proprietary software, consider using the packages that are provided by the vscodium project instead.
Both Visual Studio Code and a number of extensions use telemetry. Always review the documentation for an extension before you install it, and look for notes about telemetry.
Dismiss Join GitHub today. GitHub is home to over 50 million developers working together to host and review code, manage projects, and build software together. VS Code is also available as a Homebrew Cask package on Mac: brew cask install visual-studio-code A step that I find a lot of tutorials often leave out is the ability to execute VS Code from the terminal.
Visual Studio Code is a lightweight code editor with support for many programming languages through extensions. To install the latest version, use Homebrew: brew install -cask visual-studio-code macOS integration. Launch VS Code from the command line. After that, you can launch VS Code from your terminal: code. Will open VS Code. Brew cask install visual-studio-code: This comment has been minimized. Sign in to view. Copy link Quote reply va9 commented Jul 18, 2016. What about windows users?
Installing Code on macOS
To install Visual Studio Code on macOS with Homebrew, enter this command in a terminal window:
If you manually install Visual Studio Code, rather than using Homebrew, you will need to add the code executable to your PATH. To do this, start Visual Studio Code, open the command palette, and choose Shell Command: Install ‘code’ command in PATH.
Installing Visual Studio Code to a USB Drive
To run Visual Studio Code directly from a USB device, without installing it on the computer, use portable mode.
The EDITOR Environment Variable
Remember to set the EDITOR environment variable in your shell profile, so that thiseditor is automatically invoked by command-line tools like your version control system.
To make Visual Studio Code your default editor, use this line:
Use the Live Share service for collaborative editing between copies of Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code.
Visual Studio Code enables telemetry by default, and connects to remote services for various features, such as natural language search in settings. The FAQ explains how Code complies with the GDPR.
To disable telemetry and crash reporting, set these options in Preferences > Settings:
To see settings for online services, search for @tag:usesOnlineServices in Preferences > Settings.
Microsoft also add telemetry to some of their extensions to Visual Studio Code. This means that you must check the description of each extension to know whether it will send data to Microsoft, even if you have disabled telemetry for Visual Studio Code itself.
Third-party extensions may also send telemetry data. Check the specific settings that each extension uses, because settings may not be correctly tagged.
Visual Studio Code automatically recognises if a formatter is available for the type of file that you are currently editing. The Format Document command runs the appropriate formatter on the current file.
To automatically format files on save, enable this setting:
Extensions for Writing
Extensions for Software Development
- Git Lens to enhance the Git support in the user interface
- TheDockerextension
- Prettier - Integration for the Prettier code formatter
- VSCodeVim to emulate Vim
Extensions for Popular Programming Languages
Visual Studio Code includes support for JavaScript, TypeScript and Node.js. To add support for other programming languages, install the extension for the languages that you would like to use.
Run this command to add thePythonextension:
You will need to install some additional tools into the environment to use all of the features of this extension.
Run this command to add theGo extension, whichturns Code into a development environment for Go:
The Go extension will automatically download and configure all of the tools that it needs.
Run this command to add theRuby extension:
You will need to install some additional tools into the environment to use all of the features of this extension.
For UNIX shell scripts, use Shellcheck. Run this command to add theShellcheck extension:
You will need to install Shellcheck into the environment to use all of the features of this extension.
Useful Extensions for Web Development
- ESLintor TSLint forJavaScript linter integration
- Debugger for Chrometo debug JavaScript in the Web browser
Useful Extensions for Operations
Visual Studio Code is a lightweight code editor with support for many programming languages through extensions
Installation
To install the latest version, use Homebrew:
macOS integration
Launch VS Code from the command line.
After that, you can launch VS Code from your terminal:
code .
will open VS Code in the current directorycode myfile.txt
will openmyfile.txt
in VS Code
Useful Extensions
Python
Python - Python code highlighting
To enable auto-formatting on 'Save', i.e.
⌘ + S
, configure the following:Change the default formatter to
Black
instead ofAutopep8
. Critical to avoid large diffs. Go to Preferences -> User Settings and update the settingpython.formatter.provider
toBlack
Enable
Format on Save
Setting: Editor: Format On Save setting on Code -> Preferences -> Settings
JavaScript
- ESLint - Useful to check JavaScript errors and helps in auto-formatting the code
- Prettier - JavaScript code formatter
SQL
Markdown
Brew Cask Install Is Disabled
- Markdown Preview - Read Markdown files in VSCode
GitLens
- GitLens - Supercharge the Git capabilities built into VSCode
Docker
- Docker - Create, manage, and debug images from within VSCode
JSON
- Paste JSON as Code - Infers types from sample JSON data, then outputs strongly typed models and serializers for working with that data in your desired programming language
Brew Cask Install Visual-studio-code-insiders
Live Server
- Live Server - Launches a local development server with live reloading for both static and dynamic
VS Code Icons
- vscode-icons - Adds unique icons to distinguish different file extensions (easier to glance through your directories)