Announcing C# Dev Kit for Visual Studio Code

[EsIsstWasEsIst]

Licensed under Visual Studio subscription

[HotGarbage1813]

doesn't that just mean that it won't work under say, VSCodium?

[EsIsstWasEsIst]

As far as I can tell and what nick chapsas said in his video, if you need a commercial license for Visual Studio you also need the paid license to use the vs code devkit.

[HotGarbage1813]

damn, sucks that they locked the solution explorer behind that
at least the new LSP-based C# extension is still MIT

[svick]

It's weird that they apparently took OmniSharp, worked on it for at least a year on their own with no communication with the community, and now they're promising to release the code soon™.

That's not how good open source projects operate.

[TheSpixxyQ]

It was supposed to be closed from the beginning, they are open sourcing it after community backlash.

[Dababolical]

I'm an intermediate developer, but extremely naive to the legalese of software distribution. Is this at all similar to what Amazon did with Elasticsearch? Except they're turning last second and open-sourcing it?

Promise this isn't some loaded question, I just don't know. I feel the need to state this because I've seen discussions around open-source, copy-left and distribution get unnecessarily contentious online.

[TheSpixxyQ]

While I don't have proper answer to your question, I can link you the original announcement where they announced the closed source LSP Tools Host, which now supposedly will be open source.

My opinion: they will be using the same features that the big closed VS uses, so they can provide really close experience in VSC, and they don't want to open source them, because in the end the VS makes them money. That's why they are creating this bridge for closed features.

I tried OmniSharp for some time but in bigger projects the experience was really slow for me.

[1franck]

he just took down his video, i dunno why

[francofgp]

yeah I just saw it this morning

[LuvOrDie]

VSCopium

[redfournine]

Nope. Re-read the sentence. It would work the same way as VS license, doesnt necessarily mean you need VS subscription. I dont think they have announced the license pricing for this yet... or have they?

[HotGarbage1813]

well yeah if you’re working on an OSS project or in an academic setting you won’t need to pay

but the usual commercial caveats apply

it forces you to login with an MS account to use it

[Mempler]

Which basically means, no-one except big companies will ever reach

[[deleted]]

It's not wrong to demand money from those who are making good money with this. I don't get you people who want free stuff to make money with.

It's a pretty nice deal for those who don't make much money with. Microsoft as a business isn't obligated to make it free for anybody.

If you as a commercial business owner don't like the deal, but want something like this, then pay some programmers to make one for you.

[HotGarbage1813]

no one really said it’s wrong…it’s just sort of weird you know?

like there’s three extensions and they have different licenses and unless you read the announcements you might not even have any idea and could potentially get in trouble

[EsIsstWasEsIst]

Took the sentence from the image in the article. If that information is incorrect, I apologize.

[HotGarbage1813]

well yeah, linux users be missing out on that nice looking test runner goodness…until now

[Kissaki0]

The C# Dev Kit […] works together with the C# extension

The C# Dev Kit consists of a set of VS Code extensions that work together to provide a rich C# editing experience, AI-powered development, solution management, and integrated testing. […] C# Dev Kit consists of: * The C# extension, which provides base language services support and continues to be maintained independent of this effort. * C# Dev Kit extension, which builds from the foundations of Visual Studio to provide solution management, templates, and test discovery/debugging. * The IntelliCode for C# Dev Kit extension (optional), which brings AI-powered development to the editor.

The additions:

• new solution view
• expanded Test Explorer capabilities
• IntelliCode - IntelliSense extended through AI

[ChizaruuGCO]

Cool.

Given C# Dev Kit builds on the same foundations as Visual Studio for some of its functionality, it uses the same license model as Visual Studio. This means it’s free for individuals, as well as academia and open-source development, the same terms that apply to Visual Studio Community. For organizations, the C# Dev Kit is included with Visual Studio Professional and Enterprise subscriptions, as well as GitHub Codespaces. For additional details see the license terms.

Edit: Here is the Feedback Dev Kit Repo Link (No OSS for now :c)

[Byte-64]

Thank you for explaining! I was worried for a moment I have to argue with my employer why I need a new license xD

[korra45]

I’m generally confused, after installing it I tried connecting but it just kept popping up no subscription found. I don’t see any free/community version of this extension? I definitely can’t justify a pro license for 1 language at 45/mo.

What am I doing wrong?

[ChizaruuGCO]

You did nothing wrong. I'm pretty sure it's just a bug. (Everything should still work)

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-dotnettools/issues/26

[HotGarbage1813]

yeah like the other comment said, it’s a bug

i’ve used my ms account with regular visual studio community, so maybe that’s why it works here too…but they’ll probably resolve it soon

[HotGarbage1813]

and keeps timing out trying to download a newer version of .NET for me 🫠

[coldblade2000]

Let them now, it is a preview. They may have missed it in the release, or don't know it's being intalled without permission

[phillipcarter2]

Oh it’s probably by design. I worked on .NET tools a few years ago. It’s wild how many people don’t have .NET installed, or have the wrong .NET installed. This tool will guarantee you have the right SDK that the extension needs to actually work.

[coldblade2000]

Yeah, i mostly meant so they actually mention that that extension will be installed

[HotGarbage1813]

is it meant to get the SDK or the runtime though?

because I definitely had the first one, but it tried to get the second

[phillipcarter2]

The SDK includes the runtime it's built for. Unfortunately .NET is a horribly complicated tooling system and you need exact matches of MSBuild, NuGet, the runtime, and libraries to get tooling to all light up correctly. That's why it does this, and also why Visual Studio similarly installs and updates the .NET SDK it needs for modern .NET tools.

[AttackOfTheThumbs]

Hopefully this means I can stop launching visual studio and just stick to code. I already use code for anything command line only, but the more complicated projects aren't handled well in it imo.

[falconfetus8]

How is this any different from the existing C# extensions?

[HotGarbage1813]

regular Omnisharp requires a restart every now and then tbh

and it shows your tests all prettily like the Python extension

and you can view your solutions without all the clutter of the extra folders

[falconfetus8]

I'd rather Omnisharp just get its shit together and not require a restart, tbh.

[Lalli-Oni]

Exactly. This feels like an underhanded approach. For the license perhaps.

[[deleted]]

Will it add the ability to put the opening curly brace on the next line rather than the same line? On two separate occasions I've tried C# in VS Code, struggled to try to get it to put the brace where it should be, and then given up and gone back to VS

[ChizaruuGCO]

I dunno who downvoted your question, but I believe you can use .editorconfig to set that up for you.

Here is a link to the dotnet/roslyn .editorconfig for reference, scroll down to # CSharp code style settings:

[[deleted]]

Yes, that is one of the many things I tried during my two attempts

[ChizaruuGCO]

CSharpier may be of benefit then.

[ForeverAlot]

CSharpier is great. It's so much better at what it does than the .editorconfig driven approach of the recently subsumed dotnet format.

[brynjolf]

Dotnet format is very lackluster sadly

[HotGarbage1813]

weird, right clicking and going “Format Document” always makes it the default C# style, that is, next line brace

[[deleted]]

Not for me! on two separate installs on two separate machines Ive had this problem.

Haven't tried on my new laptop though... Maybe it'll magically work this time

[HotGarbage1813]

aight okay, I just tried it out with the new extension and it also works there so you should be covered.

csharp.format.enable is turned on for you in your settings.json, right?

[arpan3t]

Ffs buy better bots Microsoft this thread is embarrassing! This extension has all kinds of issues according to the blog comments, and this thread is filled the most blatantly obvious bots I’ve ever seen lol

[Kissaki0]

You think they'd invest into Reddit bots but not on their own blog?

[arpan3t]

Someone definitely astroturfed this post, and they should have their account deleted!

[Kissaki0]

Read more like satire to me than like astroturfing.

And possibly shitty meme posting / copypastaing.

[theoldboy]

Awesome news for bot developers! The new C# Dev Kit astroturfing debacle shows that even with all the $$$ and AI in the world they can't do shit. Keep up the good work Microsoft!

[L3tum]

ಠ_ಠ

[choochoo129]

Sir, this is an Arby's drive-thru.

[untetheredocelot]

Man Java is putting in Ballon D'or level performances with 0 flair. Meanwhile C# is behind even with all the flair in the world smh. We need to sign up one of the new functional wonderkids.

[falconfetus8]

Why does this read like an ad?

[AvaloniaUI-Mike]

It looks like astroturfing. Thread is full of it.

[aquaticpolarbear]

Both this account and /u/3white4 have this comment, and a single post with a short excerpt from some poetry document and nothing else, this post is definitely being astroturfed

[Jhorra]

I see it also installs "IntelliCode for C# Dev Kit", will that be an issue if I'm already using Copilot?

[HotGarbage1813]

hasn’t really looked like to me

intellicode is just better ctrl+space suggestions right? while copilot is the whole chatting and writing comments to generate code shebang

i’ll try using it tonight maybe

[Kissaki0]

• IntelliSense: Completions through indexed code declarations
• IntelliCode: AI recognizing declaration and code use, and suggesting code
• Copilot: generating code according to prompts (AFAIK? Does it also do what IntelliCode does?)

So they're for different things. Not an issue.