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Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.1 Hits RC Milestone

The latest version includes both fixes and upgrades.

Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.1 is out of beta and has moved on to the Release Candidate (RC) stage.

Shahrokh Mortazavi wrote about the update on the Visual Studio blog today. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open source plugin that allows developers to use the Python language inside Visual Studio, giving them access to the IDE's features like IntelliSense, debugging, profiling and so on.

PTVS 2.1 has numerous updates, including bug fixes; search paths within a project for IntelliSense; Django template debugging; standard string visualizers like HTML, XML and JSON; and Anaconda environments can use "conda install" from PTVS.

PTVS has become a popular tool because of features like integrated IPython REPL support for smart history, shell commands and inline images, along with Python-specific tools like mixed-mode debugging of Python with C++ and remote debugging of Linux servers in Azure.

PTVS 2.1 is available for commercial versions of Visual Studio back to 2010, and Visual Studio Express 2013 (the free version of Visual Studio). It's available under the Apache 2.0 license, and is hosted on CodePlex, Microsoft's source code repository. It can be downloaded here.

PTVS 2.1 was released as a beta last April. The first iteration of PTVS came out in 2012.

About the Author

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

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