Powershell Extension on Visual Studio Code - Demo

This extension provides rich PowerShell language support for Visual Studio Code. Now you can write and debug PowerShell scripts using the excellent IDE-like interface that Visual Studio Code provides.

Installation

• Instructions to Install VScode and powershell Extension

• One-Liner to download VScode and install Powershell Extension [Requires Powershell v5]

  Install-Script Install-VSCode -Scope CurrentUser; Install-VSCode.ps1

Why to use VSCode? When I have ISE!

• Open source! runs on Linux, Mac and Windows. Same Scripting experience on all OS in a Hybrid environment
• Powershell extension for Visual studio code has been downloaded by 800,000+ times, that means something!
• Version 1.0 has been released in May and its already very popular
• Powershell is not only for small tasks and quick automation fixes, and IDE makes it easy to develop complex automation projects for On Prem and Cloud technologies

A. Features

1. Syntax highlighting
2. Intellisense
3. Code Completion
4. Snippets
5. Peek/GoTo definition of Functions, Cmdlets & Variables
6. Find References
7. Text Encoding
8. Indent Customization
9. Global Search / Replace
10. Version/Source Control integration [Git]
11. Run selection [F8]
12. Launch Online help [Ctrl+F1]
13. Command Palette [Ctrl+Shift+P]
14. Powershell Gallery Integration and more...

B. Performance

• Light weight IDE (Integrated development Enviroment)

• Also makes you write scripts faster

  • Rich text editing feartues and Looks ups
  • Very Keyboard Friendly
  • Below is a oneliner to download VSCode cheat sheet for Keyboard shortcuts on Windows

  (iwr "https://github.com/PrateekKumarSingh/CheatSheets").Links | ?{$_.title -Like "*VSCODE*windows*"} | %{iwr "http://github.com$($_.href)?raw=true" -OutFile $_.title -Verbose}

C. Extensibility

• Doesn't matter what language you are using like, Powershell, C#, Java, Python You can add rich editing, build and more features using the extensions to inhance you overall experience.

• Rich extension ecosystem - More than thousands of extensions available

  • Language Support - Powershell, C#, Python, Perl, PHP, HTML etc.
  • MSSQL, Docker, Git History, Markdown
  • Stack Overflow/ Google search and much more

D. Microsoft is heavily investing on VSCode

• No more active development on Powershell ISE in recent years.
• Infact Powershell team at Microsoft & even powershell Community actively contributes to Powershell Extension on VSCode
  • @daviwil - Maintainer of VSCode-Powershell Extension
• and it would be no wonder if VSCode starts getting shipped with Windows OS few years down the line
• Very fast development, Issues reported are getting tracked and there are quick bugfixes
  • Any one can Report Issues here
  • These guys fix issues pretty fast - Start-Process https://twitter.com/jsnover/status/867697579504611328

What Powershell-VSCode ext can't do but ISE can? I mean as of now ;)

• Remote runspace tabs
• Language aware code folding

VSCode-Powershell Learning Resources

• Setting up Visual Studio Code for PowerShell Development [Video]

• Get started with PowerShell development in Visual Studio Code [Article]

• Visual Studio Code editing features for PowerShell development – Part 1 [Article]

• Visual Studio Code editing features for PowerShell development – Part 2 [Article]

• Debugging PowerShell script in Visual Studio Code – Part 1 [Article]

• Debugging PowerShell script in Visual Studio Code – Part 2 [Article]