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VS Code Snippets Leads Recent Open Source GA Announcements
GitHub's "Release Radar" for November shows a Visual Studio Code snippets project leading a raft of open source offerings that reached general availability in November.
Specifically, the project is Snippets for VSCode 2.1 from "Taha BASRI," which, despite the minor-version designation, is actually the first full release.
"VS Code is one of the most popular code editors around," GitHub said last week in its regular monthly post detailing new GA announcements. "Snippets for VS Code is an extension allowing developers to play with code snippets without quitting the editor. Snippets will be synced across all your devices using VSCode. While 2.1 might seem like a smaller release, this is the first version shipped as a full release. Congrats to the team on moving out of pre-release."
The project's README.md file describes it:
Code snippets are great additions to anyone who wants to save time while developing. They make it easier to enter repeating code, such as loops, complex HTML structures or reusable methods.
Visual Studio Code already has great support for snippets, including snippets appearance in IntelliSense (Ctrl+Space), tab-completion, as well as a dedicated snippet picker (Insert Snippet in the Command Palette).
This extension takes snippets to another level bringing new features which will improve managing code snippets.
The tool helps developers to create, organize, open, edit and sync snippets. That latter capability is still experimental, as it uses VS Code's built-in Settings Sync feature, which is still in preview.
[Click on image for larger, animated GIF view.] Editing a Snippet with VS Code's Built-in Snippet Syntax in Animated Action (source: Taha BASRI).
The project description states: "Starting with version 2.0 and up, Snippets supports backup using VSCode Settings Sync feature. This means that you will no longer need to deal with snippets location in your file local machine. Your snippets will be saved alongside your VSCode data no matter your operating system."
The release notes show the following features that have been added since v2.0:
- Provide snippets as suggestions via IntelliSense or by typing character '>'.
- Update vulnerable dependencies.
- Provide safer logic when dealing with restore process.
- Rename backup instead of deleting it.
- Use globalState as default snippets location. No more files in filesystem !
- Enable sync using VSCode API.
- Polish the usability of option snippets.useWorkspaceFolder.
- Refresh snippets across multiple open workspaces in more efficient way.
- Add GitHub Actions to automate Code Analysis.
The project's Visual Studio Code Marketplace item shows it's nearing 9,000 installations, having earned an average 3.7 rating (scale to 5) from six users who reviewed it.
While the snippets tool is probably of most interest to Visual Studio Magazine readers (along with Material Design icons listed below), other open source projects reaching GA status last month highlighted by GitHub include:
- Material Design Icons 6.5.95
- Material for MkDocs 8.0
- PHP 8.1
- PHPStan 1.0
- PyGame 2.0.3
- React 18.0
- Luciferin 2.0
"We hope these releases inspire you to get involved in open source or update your latest project. If you are working on an open source project and are shipping a major version soon, please get in touch. You can now check out our new Release Radar repository, and submit your project to be featured on our blog. Also, don’t forget our new auto-generate release notes feature so you can have all your release notes created for you."
About the Author
David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.