News

VS Code May 2020 Update Features Tips, Remote Development Talks from Build

• By David Ramel
• 06/10/2020

While announcing the usual plethora of new and improved features and functionality in the May 2020 update of the open source, cross-platform Visual Studio Code editor, the dev team included a new twist: talks on tips and tricks, remote development, and the history of VS Code presented in the recent Build 2020 developer conference.

The talks presented by VS Code team members include:

• VS Code Tips and Tricks - 20 tips and tricks to make you more productive with VS Code.
• What every Visual Studio Code user should know about GitHub - Learn about VS Code's GitHub integration for PRs and issues.
• Remote Development with Visual Studio Code - Learn how Visual Studio Code enables developers to work remotely from anywhere.
• The History of Visual Studio Code - Learn about how VS Code started and evolved until today.

Also listed were extensive details on updates and new features, summarized thusly:

• Accessibility improvements - Status bar navigation, easier keyboard text selection: The status bar now supports keyboard navigation; four new commands make it easier to start and end selection using the keyboard; Activity bar entries now have a tab role and set the appropriate aria-expanded state; Aria labels of editors properly convey several editor states.
• Flexible view and panel layout - Move and group views in the Side Bar and Panel: Developers who prefer a view from the Side Bar to be located in the Panel or vice versa can do that by dragging a view by its header or an entire group by its icon or title from its current placement to the desired location.
• Pinned editor tabs - Pin editors in the title bar to keep frequently used files handy: Developers can pin tabs from the context menu or via a new command.
• Add GitHub remotes - Add GitHub remotes to your local repository: Another new command, Git: Add Remote, lets developers add a GitHub repository as a remote to local repositories.
• Automatic debugger configuration - Save and modify generated debug configurations: A new option lets developers save an automatic debug configuration into a launch.json so it can be opened up for editing. Coders can now show all automatic debug configurations from the Run and Debug start view. The Debug dropdown now remembers the previously selected automatic debug configuration.
• JavaScript CommonJS auto imports - Auto imports will now use require for CommonJS modules: Along with support for TypeScript 3.9.4, VS Code can detect if a developer is working in a CommonJS style JavaScript module and make auto imports use require instead of import.
• JS/TS refactorings preserve newlines - Formatting is preserved during refactoring operations: JavaScript and TypeScript refactorings including Extract to method and Move to new file now try to preserve the original formatting of the refactored source code, including newlines.
• Settings Sync preview - New Synced Machines and Data views to manage your preferences: The update includes enhanced support for administering and diagnosing Settings Sync, furthering efforts to support synchronizing VS Code preferences across machines, a feature now available in preview for Insiders releases.
• GitHub Issue Notebooks - Run GitHub issue queries and display results in a custom Notebook: New functionality available with a symbol press or the Go to Symbol in Editor command supports quick outlines of notebook extensions, like GitHub Issue Notebooks, such that developers can see a preview of Markdown and code cells in a current notebook.
• Windows ARM64 support - New VS Code Insiders ARM64 builds are available: Another Insiders benefit is official Windows for ARM 64-bit builds, which work with the Microsoft Surface Pro X.

Much more information on all of the above and many more features is available in the announcement post.