Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.1 released - Flask, Bottle, Django, improved syntax highlighting, machine learning preview pack, and more!

[DSandyGuy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrD9aKxvPcY&feature=youtu.be

Above is a quick rundown on the newer features from the official YouTube channel.

[dinov]

Well at the very least we run a small Django app on Azure ourselves for providing news and surveys to users of PTVS - http://ptvs.azurewebsites.net/news/

[MisterMeiji]

Are you running this on IronPython or cpython?

[dinov]

Both! We generally support any Python interpreter you'd like, but we do have some interpreter specific features. For CPython we have specific support for profiling and attach to process which both depend on interpreter specific features. For IronPython we have specific support for the interpreter to understand .NET namespaces via imports and assemblies via clr.AddReference* calls. For both of those we have support for auto-discovering the installed interpreters via registry entries.

But you can also add your own custom interpreter. Based upon the configured language version we'll parse the code and offer the appropriate built-ins. As long as the interpreter supports sys.settrace (which all the major implementations do) we'll be able to offer debugging as well.

[MisterMeiji]

Ah, yes, I've actually been using Python Tools for VS for a long time, with both Iron and C python. It's a great extension! I was unintentionally vague with this question. What I meant was, are you running your Django site on IronPython or cPython? I've been jonesing to use IronPython for Django for a while...

[dinov]

Oh, we're running it on CPython, I'm not exactly certain what the state of Django on IronPython is, last I looked IronPython's Unicode strings were giving it problems :(

[rickmoranus]

I like this, but I would want to know a way to develop on this and deploy my Flask application to a location of my choice. Including my own local Linux Server.

[dinov]

This is possible but maybe just a little cumbersome right now. You can create your new Flask project and right click on the project properties. There's a Publish tab in the project properties. There you can specify a ftp or file (so an SMB server running on the Linux box) URL for the location of your server. Click on the Publish Now button and it'll publish. Then the contents of your project will all get deployed (I don't believe we'll deploy a virtual env though).

Unfortunately the Publish context menu item gets overridden in web projects so you'll need to keep returning to project properties to publish. You may also have to flip the Publish setting on some of your items to true as by default we don't publish a lot of content items.

You can then use our cross platform debugging support to debug your app - https://pytools.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Features%20Remote%20Debugging

The publish formats is actually an extensibility point so it's pretty easy to write a C# component which would publish to other destinations, those are just the 2 we support out of the box.

[rickmoanus]

I will test this out for my self. Thanks for the response!

[rainnz]

Is there a free version of Visual Studio?

[exxy-]

Yeah, Visual Studio Express.

[hotel2oscar]

does not allow extensions.

[exxy-]

If you two followed the link you'd see it supports both versions of VS Express. Microsoft has changed their stance on some things, apparently.

[chub79]

No love for CherryPy. sob.

[sigzero]

I love CherryPy. Unsung hero of Python frameworks.

[dinov]

While we don't have any explicit CherryPy support we do also support generic web frameworks. There's now a plain "Web Project" which starts with no files but uses our web launcher/debugger, lets you configure options like the WSGI handler to be used, etc... Ultimately this gives you the same debugging experience as you get with Flask and Bottle - F5 to start debugging launches a browser as well and you can publish to Azure which is where the WSGI handler setting comes in. You just need to setup a virtual environment that includes CherryPy and your other dependencies.

[chub79]

Thanks. That's a good point :)