News

New Installer Eases Java Setup for Visual Studio Code

Microsoft today introduced a new installer to make it easier to code with the No. 1 programming language, Java, in the No. 1 development environment, Visual Studio Code.

Those No. 1 rankings come from various programming language popularity indices (such as this) and a recent StackOverflow survey.

With the rise in popularity of both offerings come new users, and the tool is designed to help them get started easier, simplifying the formerly manual process that often involved several independent installations.

"As the vibrant Java community expands to include more students and developers from other languages, many new comers struggle with setting up their environment to be able to start coding," said Xiaokai He, senior program manager for Java on Visual Studio Code and Azure in a June 14 blog post.

The tool checks on needed components, including a Java development kit (JDK) -- with the recommended offering being AdoptOpenJDK, a free, vendor-neutral open source JDK distribution based on the OpenJDK project.

Visual Studio Code Java Pack Installer
[Click on image for larger view.] Visual Studio Code Java Pack Installer (source: David Ramel).

It also helpfully checks for VS Code itself -- very important -- and essential Java extensions, even offering to download and install the former and install and configure the latter.

Visual Studio Code Java Pack Installer
[Click on image for larger view.] Visual Studio Code Java Pack Installer (source: Microsoft).

The tool can do new, clean installations or updates, working only on Windows for now.

You can grab the installer here (note, clicking on the link triggers a 39MB download).

About the Author

David Ramel is an editor and writer for Converge360.

comments powered by Disqus

Featured

  • AI for GitHub Collaboration? Maybe Not So Much

    No doubt GitHub Copilot has been a boon for developers, but AI might not be the best tool for collaboration, according to developers weighing in on a recent social media post from the GitHub team.

  • Visual Studio 2022 Getting VS Code 'Command Palette' Equivalent

    As any Visual Studio Code user knows, the editor's command palette is a powerful tool for getting things done quickly, without having to navigate through menus and dialogs. Now, we learn how an equivalent is coming for Microsoft's flagship Visual Studio IDE, invoked by the same familiar Ctrl+Shift+P keyboard shortcut.

  • .NET 9 Preview 3: 'I've Been Waiting 9 Years for This API!'

    Microsoft's third preview of .NET 9 sees a lot of minor tweaks and fixes with no earth-shaking new functionality, but little things can be important to individual developers.

  • Data Anomaly Detection Using a Neural Autoencoder with C#

    Dr. James McCaffrey of Microsoft Research tackles the process of examining a set of source data to find data items that are different in some way from the majority of the source items.

  • What's New for Python, Java in Visual Studio Code

    Microsoft announced March 2024 updates to its Python and Java extensions for Visual Studio Code, the open source-based, cross-platform code editor that has repeatedly been named the No. 1 tool in major development surveys.

Most   Popular

Subscribe on YouTube