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Microsoft Updates Python Tools for Visual Studio

The first update in more than a year includes support for new Web frameworks.

Visual Studio is widely acknowledged to be the best development environment for .NET Framework developers. But Microsoft is working to go beyond that group, trying to become a top IDE for other developers, too. Toward that end, Microsoft announced a beta release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.1.

S. "Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president of Microsoft's developer division, announced the update on his blog today. "PTVS," as it's called, includes "integrated IPython REPL support for smart history, shell commands and inline images." It also contains Python-specific tools like mixed mode debugging of Python with C++ and remote debugging of Linux servers in Azure.

Somasegar blogged that the 2.1 update includes support for Web frameworks like Bottle and Flask, inclusion into the free version of Visual Studio, known as Visual Studio Express, and enhancements to Django template IntelliSense. A generic Web framework template has also been added, for use with frameworks like Pyramid. Other updates include full support for HTML5, CSS and JavaScript; CSS and JavaScript syntax highlighting; PyLint integration; and bug fixes.

PTVS is open source, under the liberal Apache 2.0 license, and hosted on CodePlex, Microsoft's source code repository. It was first made available two years ago, Somasegar said. An update was released in March 2013, designated 2.0.

The release of PTVS comes in the same week that Microsoft published tools for the JavaScript platform Node.js.

About the Author

Keith Ward is the editor in chief of Virtualization & Cloud Review. Follow him on Twitter @VirtReviewKeith.

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