Transitioning to .NET Core on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Chapter 9. Visual Studio Code

In April 2015, Microsoft announced the availability of Visual Studio Code (VS Code), a free code editor that runs on every platform, including Windows, OS X, and Linux. While Visual Studio remains Windows-only, VS Code reflects Microsoft’s commitment to open source, specifically to making it easier for .NET developers to be productive in any environment.

Installing Visual Studio Code

VS Code requires a UI environment to work. If you are running Linux as a VM in a console-only environment, you won’t be able to use VS Code in Linux. However, if you are running Gnome or some other desktop shell, you can run VS Code.

Using a Visual Editor from Outside the VM

You can edit code that resides inside your VM from outside the VM, with VS Code or even Visual Studio, provided the host is running a GUI such as Windows or OS X. The short version of how you do this is that you share a volume between the host and the VM and put the code there.

For more details, refer to Chapter 10.

VS Code supports multiple languages, with code assistance (e.g., IntelliSense) and navigation for each. C#, JavaScript, TypeScript, Node.js, as well as support for just about every other language is available. This is because VS Code is built on the Electron engine, the same editor base that is used for the Atom editor.

(The fact is, you can use Electron to build any cross-platform application. It’s HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.)

To begin, visit the Visual Studio Code home page and download ...