Node.js Tools for Visual Studio 2015 1.2 Improves on Productivity -- Visual Studio Magazine

Node.js Tools for Visual Studio 2015 1.2 Improves on Productivity

Latest update includes support for more recent Node.js release, as well as quite a few productivity enhancements and bug fixes.

By Michael Domingo
07/28/2016

The Visual Studio Team released an update to its Node.js Tools for Visual Studio 2015 that comes mainly with productivity enhancements and bug fixes, as well as support for the most recent version of Node.js.

Node.js Tools for VS 2015 is Microsoft's tooling that allows for working with Node.js projects from within the VS environment. Version 1.2 is an incremental release that now adds support for Node.js 6.0.0 that was released in back in April; Node.js is currently at version 6.3.1 as of July 21.

Among the more significant productivity enhancements is ES6 IntelliSense support, which is now on by default. "The new ES6 IntelliSense engine takes advantage of type definition files to provide better and more performant IntelliSense," writes Sara Itani, a software engineer with the Node.js Tools team, in a blog post. " This is applicable for the most popular Node.js frameworks, such as Commander, Express, jQuery and Knockout."

Node.js Tools 1.2 also adds improved unit testing support, including support for the tape test framework (a node-specific unit test).

Other improvements include more reliable debugging and general performance. Itani alludes to a number of user-reported debugging issues, particularly with inconsistent and improperly working breakpoints. Those issues should be working properly as of this release, she said. Itani also noted that users had experienced stability issues, with much of it having to do with out-of-memory crashes and systems that would inexplicably hang, most of which have been resolved.

Node.js Tools 1.2 can be obtained at GitHub here; the link also provides a more current picture of known issues and other minor update additions.

About the Author

Michael Domingo is a long-time software publishing veteran, having started up and managed several developer publications for the Clipper compiler, Microsoft Access, and Visual Basic. He's also managed IT pubs for 1105 Media, including Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine and Virtualization Review before landing his current gig as Visual Studio Magazine Editor in Chief. Besides his publishing life, he's a professional photographer, whose work can be found by Googling domingophoto.

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