Microsoft's VS Code Comes To Raspberry Pi And Chromebook – New V1.50 Update Is Out

An official Microsoft build of the Visual Studio Code editor is now available for Linux Armv7 and Arm64 architecture devices, extending Microsoft's popular cross-platform code editor to Chromebooks, the Raspberry Pi and rival Arm-based single-board Linux computers such as Odroid.   

Developers have been able to use VS Code on Chromebooks and Raspberry Pi for a while thanks to community-made builds based on the open-source edition of VS Code. But now developers can get VS Code for Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat, Fedora and SUSE directly from Microsoft.  

While the Raspberry Pi and Chromebooks might not be powerful enough for all developer needs, Microsoft notes that VS Code's remote development extension pack can provide access to more powerful development environments when needed. 

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The extensions allow developers to run commands inside a container, the Windows Subsystem for Linux or on a remote machine. 

VS Code support for Linux Armv7 and Arm64 arrives in the new, version 1.50 release of Microsoft's open-source code editor for Windows 10, macOS and Linux. 

The September 2020 release of VS Code introduces debug console filter improvements to make it easier to find or hide logging output according to the developer's needs, and new JavaScript debugging features. 

On the JavaScript side, the Auto Attach modes for controlling when debugging Node.js processes occur in VS Code's integrated terminal have moved beyond the experimental phase. 

Microsoft's 'flame chart' VS Code extension now shows performance metrics while debugging JavaScript code in real time. It shows CPU and memory usages for Node.js programs, while debugging in Chrome and Edge will also show DOM nodes, relayouts, and restyles.          

VS Code users on macOS will need to reapprove access to Apple's Keychain even if it's been authorized previously due to changes in how the password manager is accessed from VS Code. Previously VS Code accessed Keychain from the window process itself but now it accesses it from the main process, Microsoft explains. 

This release also brings improvements to pinned tabs via a new workbench setting that lets users select "normal", "shrink", and "compact" to resize pinned tabs. The shrink option shrinks pinned tabs to a fixed size showing parts of the editor label.     

To improve customization of VS Code, Microsoft has added Webview Views support to this edition of VS Code, allowing extension makers to build webview-based views that can be added to the sidebar or panel of VS Code.  

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Microsoft says it is now building VS Code with nightly builds of TypeScript 4.1. 

This month's notable extensions include the Microsoft C/C++ extension, which is out of preview and has reached version 1.0 with support for Linux on Arm and Arm 64 and featuring IntelliSense auto-complete, as well as remote build and debug support.

Also out of preview is the Microsoft Edge Tools for VS Code extension, which provides Microsoft Edge dev tools within VS Code. 

Finally, Microsoft has released the Azure Cognitive Search extension in preview. It gives developers the tools and interfaces for adding a search experience over content in web, mobile, and enterprise applications.

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