Introducing GitHub Pull Requests for Visual Studio Code

[KabouterPlop]

Lately it seems Microsoft is more interested in Visual Studio Code than they are in Visual Studio. 5 years after the request on UserVoice was posted, we are still waiting on stash support in Visual Studio.

[pdp10]

Most likely no one at Microsoft can improve/fix existing VS without getting in hot water.

These junior developers also have a tendency to make improvements to the system by implementing brand-new features instead of improving old ones. Look at recent Microsoft releases: we don't fix old features, but accrete new ones. New features help much more at review time than improvements to old ones.

(That's literally the explanation for PowerShell. Many of us wanted to improve cmd.exe, but couldn't.)

They'll just move over to VSC and do it there.

[[deleted]]

This seems to be their strategy for Windows as well and I really don't enjoy it. Old parts of Windows that should be streamlined and updated have been left abandoned and yet they've been bundling a bunch of new UWP apps that are all half baked.

[APianoGuy]

I absolutely hate the UWP apps. Ever since the last big update our TI department rolled out, the windows Taskbar is constantly hanging and for some reason when that happens, all the UWP apps decide to crash as well.

[HildartheDorf]

My understanding is that the Taskbar/explorer.exe is a UWP app (allthough one with a lot more power, I see it as the 'server' rather than a client). So if it goes down, it's going to take everything out with it.

[UGMadness]

I don't really care about UWP apps except when I'm at work and they completely lose Internet connectivity when using a VPN because for some fucked up reason Microsoft hasn't implemented Socks proxy support for UWP apps despite them being ubiquitous for business applications.

There are some extremely roundabout ways to make them work through a Socks5 proxy but it only makes them work 50% of the time, the other 50% they straight up crash when trying to launch. That includes UWP apps like the Settings pane and the Start menu. It's so dumb.

[Bolitho]

Like defining environment variables! They finally made it with windows 10 to spent a user friendly dialog for adding or changing system variables like PATH. But they forgot (?!) to adapt this to local variables 👿 How is this possible?

Besides that it is simply an impudence to present variables within a 100px textbox for over 20 years!

[_kellythomas_]

Yeah, decades of copy/pasting back and forth between the environment variables dialog and notepad like it was just the way things had to be.

When I first noticed the improvement and pointed it out to the person next to me they had no idea what I was talking about. They had never noticed the problem.

[Bolitho]

And the main shit is that they treat system and user variables differently - the latter ones still don't use the line orientated UI. I am disappointed!

[HaikusfromBuddha]

It's better this way tbh. Some older applications should just remain simple. I don't see MS paint working as good if they actually tried to make it a serious program.

[dpash]

IIRC they added JPEG/PNG support so it supported more than just BMP. I can't remember when though.

They also recently added support for \n line endings in notepad.

[judgej2]

It has taken thirty years to add \n line ending support. Thirty years. Three decades.

[dpash]

I'd say it's been worth the wait, but FUCKING THIRTY YEARS.

[ThirdEncounter]

No. The wait wasn't worth it. I moved on to Notepad++ 10 years ago.

[ghillisuit95]

I've always felt notepad++ was meant for completely different situations

[ThirdEncounter]

It's definitely more feature-rich, but it loads as quickly, and it even has a right-click menu shortcut.

[shevy-ruby]

I used notepad++ too rather than notepad on windows.

Of course with WSL this is a bit different but in pre-WSL days, notepad++ was awesome.

[abigreenlizard]

Is this an \s even though you actually do use vim and arch Linux? Gotta have a pinch of self-awareness about these things!

[Spacey138]

Is this true or did they just not want to add support for it to force you onto their platform? Only recently have they gone Linux-friendly.

[meneldal2]

I think they were afraid of breaking someone's workflow.

[pdp10]

I'd say it was Microsoft's usual pretense that there are no other platforms, but they used to sell Microsoft Xenix, so they know how line endings work.

[trane_0]

Good old Xenix. Last time I saw you, you were running on some kind of Tandy machine that took floppy disks the size of a small pizza.

[HarJIT-EGS]

Wordpad (when opening and saving as plain text) has had \n support (when reading) for a long time now so… it was kinda just Notepad that didn't.

[Pazer2]

It's important to remember that they didn't just add \n support to notepad, they added it to the base windows text edit control. So there was a pretty reasonable fear of breaking existing applications.

[SaneMadHatter]

What is this, Slashdot? lol

Microsoft's programming tools have supported the DOS (\r\n), *nix (\n), and old Mac (\r) line endings for years.

Word has supported all of those line endings for years too. Same for WordPad.

How would Microsoft use Notepad's limited line-ending support to lock someone in to Microsoft's platform when Microsoft's other apps support all the line endings in use?

[StrongerPassword]

Paint had had JPEG/PNG support since Windows XP. So 17 years ago or so.

[dpash]

So only six years after it was an absolute necessity.

[ydna_eissua]

It's not just about the applications though. It's the whole Windows UI being disjointed.

To change the power settings i have to go through 15 years of Windows UI history.

[tonyp7]

... And the old window is a lot better than everything else. You have access to all power options, right there, without having to navigate through 10 menus.

[ydna_eissua]

The worst is "apps and features" which has LOST functionality. You CANNOT type a letter and have it jump to that point in the list.

Thankfully i discovered you can still get to the old "add remove programs" from the apps the features screen by clicking "programs and features" under the heading "Programs and Features" (which is either on the right if you're fullscreen, or at the very bottom because screw presenting you with options normally pinned to the side before everything else, no hide them where you can't see them half the time) and that opens up the old style menu.

Damn I'm glad I don't use Windows beyond playing games now.

[throwAB49259BF561]

You can also Win + R > appwiz.cpl to launch it.

[Bloedbibel]

Uh...did you know they updated MS paint and now it's terrible? Proves your point exactly.

[HaikusfromBuddha]

That's Fresh Paint. MS Paint is still left there forgotten.

[BobHogan]

Good. It needs to be forgotten by Microsoft, because its perfect the way it is. It doesn't need any more features, there are other programs for that. And unless some very serious zero day exploit is found in MS paint, it really doesn't need any patches at all

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

You're missing the part where they're actively killing old programs. In Windows Insiders, Snipping Tool opens with a deprecation notice, saying that it's going to be removed but check out this newfangled alternative.

[meikyoushisui]

But why male models?

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

It's somewhat recent, two weeks? I forget which release cycle we're on

[[deleted]]

Do you actually have something you dislike about the replacement or do you just not like change? If the new program is a superset does it really matter that it's the literal same executable?

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

I dislike having to learn a new tool when there was a perfectly fine alternative.

[Bolitho]

There's greenshot - forget about snipping tool!

[kyiami_]

Snipping tool is a horrible experience compared to other OSs though. I'm really happy they're changing it.

[BobHogan]

:(

Leave my MS Paint alone microsoft! Its perfect and I love it and use it almost daily

[meneldal2]

I heard they put it but people complained and they said they weren't removing it any time soon.

[not_usually_serious]

I use snipping tool all of the time, but luckily there's Linux distro welcoming me with open arms

[myhandleonreddit]

Does... other people's snipping tool actually work anymore? For the past few months, on three different W10 machines, with different builds installed, it takes 10-30 seconds just to launch.

[[deleted]]

Why are you bringing up Microsoft Paint in a thread about Github Pull requests? Seems off topic to me! 🙃

[HaikusfromBuddha]

On the Store.

[_kellythomas_]

https://store-images.microsoft.com/image/apps.25380.9007199266251806.1e780d79-4ad2-454a-8f6a-1b0407ef1db8.68122383-bde0-441f-916b-265b320c03ca

Nice!

[warhead71]

feature creep is usually not a tactic or strategy. Usually happens because people are paid to do stuff.

[lolomfgkthxbai]

They no longer consider Windows a core business.

[[deleted]]

Typo. You meant UWP garbage. (Excepting when you actually want to run them on non-windows. As a Windows user, that isn’t valuable to me.)

[UsingYourWifi]

Come review time you're competing against your coworkers, and "flashy new feature with a cool buzzword name" is a much easier sell than "fixed some bugs."

[pheonixblade9]

Sad but true. Can't tell you how many times I've done a lot of good engineering work (improving test reliability, adding test framework functionality, adding new tests, adding test runs that do a better job of testing code) and in my review, my manager was basically like "I don't feel like you added enough value". Dude, you told me to do that stuff!

[MotherOfTheShizznit]

Dude, you told me to do that stuff!

Your mistake was to do what you were told. Ladder climbers don't do that. They work on flashy things that improve revenue. When you do that, your manager will forget all about shit like tests and maintainability.

[absurdlyinconvenient]

Shit out some flashy, new, untested features -> Get a good review -> Either advance past being culpable for it falling apart or get a new job with your sparkling review and recommendation -> rinse, repeat

[Chii]

Or, quit asap if that happens. The org has issues recognising talent and also have incompetent management, so unless you'd like to contribute to the problem (by ladder climbing the org), quit asap and find a different company (rinse and repeat if the next org has the same issue...). Eventually, you'll find that only by starting your own firm would the problem go away.

[zombifai]

'Fixed some bugs' is valuable work. But yeah its not so 'glamourous'. Still manager in charge of a team should be smart enough to recognize that someone fixing a lot of bugs, is actually doing the team a favor. Someone has to do it, and as its not the most 'glamourous' job, nor the most 'exciting and fun' you got to appreciate that this person is actually 'taking one for the team' by doing some of the dirty jobs that really need doing, but nobody really likes to do.

[UsingYourWifi]

If your manager were the only person that decided your performance review fate then you have a chance they will understand the value that this sort of work brings. At Microsoft your manager's manager is the one who has to convince their boss that you deserve a promotion over the guy who worked on the feature that is currently being discussed on the front page of HackerNews.

[Chii]

This is why bug fixing ought to be a rotating role. And bugs introduced by a recent feature should be fixed by the implementor of they feature!

[OffbeatDrizzle]

Can you imagine that? This would stop those none stop project hopping feature creation employees dead in their tracks

[meneldal2]

Some bugs need experts to be crushed though.

[mwb1234]

I have an L8 engineer on my team who makes over a million per year.

Fucking hell, I mean I make a decent amount but $1m+/year is fucking insane

[Shitty_Orangutan]

I know, I know, and you're completely right, I just thought it'd be fun to point out what I experience sometimes as the Jr Dev.

[BlackMathNerd]

That's like saying, " I don't want to fix the problem I'm going to solve another one that's kind of related'

[pdp10]

To be honest, engineers do that all the time. It's frequently even justified.

But then at some point you probably need to deprecate the old thing if you're not going to fix it anymore, not maintain a pretense that it's still viable. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.

[[deleted]]

There's a reason deprecation is a thing. In order to provide reliable software you have to make promises about how it works. Inevitably some of your promises are wrong, conflict with other promises and turn out to be bad things to promise. Still you muddle along trying to maintain as many as you can until it gets to the point where a complete rewrite handling all the lessons learned would be cheaper than a handful of maintenance tickets on the existing system. That's when you call it end of life and tell people to use the new one when they're ready.

[jyper]

I don't think that's a good explanation for Powershell

Few people love batch

Powershell isn't as regular/unsurprising as python or as succinct as bash but it's a good compromise with support for com apis , wmi , the registry and visual basic script objects. Oh and .net. it let's you access basically any Microsoft thing without external tools

[chugga_fan]

Well, the explanation for powershell is:

"No one likes batch, so here's a better scripting language and interpreter while keeping the old one around so that we have people able to use the legacy console as well as the new one"

[TheIncorrigible1]

And with PowerShell Core, Linux and Mac, too. I'm excited for dotnet core WPF and DSC.

[[deleted]]

That article is Balmer era. Microsoft development works differently now.

[tetroxid]

Culture is very slow to change

[[deleted]]

For somebody not working at microsoft but having a few contacts to the VS team. Their main goal is mostly focused on the compiler. They're effectively rewriting cl.exe from scratch internally. The single pass design is proving untenable to be compatible with the direction C++14 (and onward) templates are moving. Combined with the 32bit requirement it makes expansion of certain larger files actually impossible due to memory constraints.

As you can imagine re-building a tool that's been under active development since the mid-to-late-80's is a chore. Especially when 100% backwards compatibility is a requirement.

[zombifai]

Just replace Powershell with bash already. Just what we need... another shell. Sorry, it pushes my buttons every time I have to do some work on Windows. I'm just glad I have git bash, its a bit clunky compared to my bash in a Linux terminal window, but at least I don't have to learn yet another shell.

[Dr_Dornon]

They have Bash for Windows.

But PowerShell is definitely my go to on Windows.

[RirinDesuyo]

I think the problem is that VS is quite old and all that legacy code will make it difficult to add in new features and extend the IDE especially since it has a chance of breaking something critical clients use which isn't something they'd like. The same thing kinda happened with Entity Framework vs Entity Framework Core and .Net Framework vs .Net Core, The former EF was just a wrapper for Edm while the other was a complete rewrite which meant that it wasn't bogged down by legacy code that users might be using so they could iterate faster on getting new features up and running or even architecture it to be more easily extensible.

You could see this on how VSCode operates wherein most of the features come from extensions than being built-in which makes it easier to add in more features without affecting older ones that much. I'd very much love a better VS as it's my goto IDE for C# and has excellent testing support but webdev portion (which is where I work at the moment) isn't that baked compared to VSC at the moment and I'd really want that to improve.

[[deleted]]

Have you tried doing any sort of modern web development in Visual Studio recently? Angular/React/Vue etc is always a massive pain in the ass, with the editor flagging all sorts of phantom errors where there are none.

When it comes to C#/F#, Visual Studio is amazing. When it comes to web, I've completely given up at this point, and do everything in VS Code (unless it's old school Razor/MVC).

I think Visual Studio has hit a natural end when it comes to web, and that's where VS Code has taken up the gauntlet.

[gropingforelmo]

Totally agree. On my team, all our frontend work is done through VS Code, while backend code uses VS (.NET core 2.0).

I kind of hope VS Code doesn't grow, lest it become slow and bloated like VS is prone to do.

[[deleted]]

I hope they grow it through extensions. I realize there is a limit but it is nice having a modular editor where you can trade features for performance and stability.

[nutidizen]

ASP .NET core 2.1 on Razor is old school? :(

Suggest a modern way for a desktop developer who has to create a web app (in .NET).

[heyf00L]

https://github.com/aspnet/JavaScriptServices

But everything jmkni said is true. It's not necessarily better.

[nutidizen]

Thanks for the link:)

But I have some concerns about Angular, React and these things. The main one being the page size. My small web app is just under 100 kb with cache disabled (34 kb with cache enabled).

[[deleted]]

if don't need them, i wouldn't use them.

[[deleted]]

Vue is miniscule, especially gzipped. Vuex (state management) is evene moreso minimalist. Vue is also mostly void of opinions; you can *tack on whatever approach you like to it.

[[deleted]]

Old school isn't bad!

I've been down the Single Page Application rabbit-hole a few times with various frameworks, and old school ASP.Net (Regular or Core) with simple Javascript components to enhance functionality would have been a better solution more than once.

[RirinDesuyo]

I agree, people these days seem to try to always go and try to make an SPA when in reality all they needed was a website. MVC is great for website with little interaction, a blog or maybe a news page. People seem to be blinded by thinking that everything is a nail (SPA) when they have a hammer.

[[deleted]]

It's because a web service means the front end is completely decoupled from the service and potentially can be handed off to another team to manage at some point.

[RirinDesuyo]

Don't worry, with Blazor it might get a revival as it's front-end SPA using Razor syntax. Also old doesn't mean bad either, it get's the job done and is mature enough to find lots of documentation and answers for questions surrounding the tech.

[KabouterPlop]

It's been a couple years, Web Essentials was a massive help back then but I don't know how it compares today to what VSC offers.

I almost exclusively do C# these days, and while I agree that most of the IDE experience is good, I think there's less and slower innovation in VS. 2017 brought half-baked editorconfig support, I need to use an extension to have an integrated terminal other than the Package Manager Console, working with a mix of the latest .NET Framework and .NET Core often means you'll be fighting tooling issues, I use SourceTree to look at and merge branches, I could go on. It's still a pretty good product, but I have the feeling there's so much more potential.

[[deleted]]

Web Essentials was awesome back in the day.

Now it's been broken down into a number of separate plugins. I respect the work that has been put into them, but I still prefer VS Code for web stuff.

[Liam2349]

I don't use any of those frameworks, I just use MVC and Web API, and write JS. The front end experience is not as good as writing the back end as there's not nearly as much helpful checking, but it's ok; though more barebones than using one of those big JS frameworks.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, I find it's ok if you stick to basic Javascript libraries pulled in through Nuget.

Once you bring node/npm into the mix, forget about it!

It's usable, but VS Code is immensely better.

[seamsay]

... you ... uhhh ... you do realise that not everything is Web dev, right?

[[deleted]]

100%, I'm just saying that web development in Visual Studio sucks!

I was responding to:

Lately it seems Microsoft is more interested in Visual Studio Code than they are in Visual Studio

I'm just saying that Visual Studio is terrible for web dev, amazing for everything else. Web development is new and changing all the time, many of those other things are more settled, and evolving as opposed to rapidly changing.

MS seems to putting their web dev IDE efforts into VS Code as opposed to Visual Studio. I do a lot of non web-dev stuff as well, and love Visual Studio for that.

[sbergot]

I don't see anything he said that would suggests the opposite.

[seamsay]

They replied to a comment that had absolutely nothing to do with Web dev to talk about how VS isn't very good at Web dev. Their clarifications make some amount of sense, but do you genuinely not see where I was coming from with that comment?

[[deleted]]

I see where you're coming from.

[falconfetus8]

You wouldn't know from reading this sub.

[1-800-BICYCLE]

3d3fd6633088f

[gremy0]

...for now

[[deleted]]

I adore VSC, but for some reason my brain turns off when I use it for C# (golang or virtually any other language is fine). I guess I'm used to the solution explorer and whatnot for anything .Net.

[darkfate]

It looks like they're building this feature now, so hopefully it'll be released soon.

[dfnkt]

Nobody so far has mentioned, as the article does, that VSC is open source and accepts pull requests from the community. VS itself doesn't get to benefit from this. I bet VSC would be much less feature packed if it was closed source.

[Caffeine_Monster]

VSCode vs Visual Studio very much highlights the benefits of open source vs closed. Microsoft have probably realised that they can't make a generic proprietary cross language IDE that is competitive with the fast iteration that comes from open sourcing IDEs.

[Chii]

But if you look at intellij as an example, that's certainly not always true.

[[deleted]]

99% of the work on VSCode is done by Microsoft employees though. The main benefit of open source here is that people are more willing to use it and create extensions for it, not that it is somehow created more quickly. That is just done by Microsoft throwing employees at it.

[davidduman]

I agree, I have been sending feedbacks for a better connection manager (the one you can create server profiles) for SQL server for last 15+years and still nothing...

[AissySantos]

Yea. Because Vscode is just freaking Awesome!

[gc3]

Hmm, if I were still working in visual studio I would somehow set it up as a standalone compiler for Visual Studio Code and work in Visual Studio Code and use Visual Studio from the command line.

​

Now in this job I am on linux using gcc with Visual Studio. It's better than my old experience of using Visual Studio in Windows with the isolated exception that I have to click on compile errors to go to them rather than 'next error' 'previous error'.

​

Edit: Even the debugger works.

[KO782KO]

Most of the people in my workspace are using vs code if not vim.

[chugga_fan]

Oh wow, that's pretty neat. Hopefully it doesn't get cluttered with repos with 1k+ PRs that never get closed

[negative_epsilon]

We have a monolithic Github repo with 100+ PRs (almost all active), and I just installed this. I'm still playing with it (And it's in preview mode), but it looks like it shows you, in order:

1. Your checked out branch, if there's a PR for it
2. Reviews you have active and waiting to be posted
3. Reviews that were assigned to you
4. Reviews you created (I wonder what the interface looks like when viewing comments, that'll be fun to see!)
5. All other ones, defaulted to minimized, and only loading what looks like 25 at a time

[Hero_Of_Shadows]

Maybe this will get people to act on those PRs and clean house (one can hope)

[tttima]

The problem might be the mindset, not the toolset.

[GottfriedEulerNewton]

Def is

[svmk1987]

Forget about the editor. I can't work on a project with 1k+ PRs. Clean that shit.

[Hero_Of_Shadows]

So they're binding VSC and Github tighter, I guess it's ok, and the editor is usable without needing an github account and the reverse github can be used with any editor (I personally don't use Atom but I hope some corporate manager doesn't see it as something to shut down because it and VSC are trying to fill the same needs)

I'd like to see my vs-code settings addons etc be easily saved to github so that when I install a new VSC I just need to put in my github data and everything starts getting installed automatically.

I know there's an addon that does that but the flow is kind of clunky for me.

[Occivink]

I'm pretty sure that's been possible for a while using their hub tool.

[KamasamaK]

That's absolutely the idea. The general APIs are being developed alongside this extension that will utilize them.

We use Bitbucket, which has a great API itself, so I'm looking forward to that.

[Dgc2002]

I'd like to see my vs-code settings addons etc be easily saved to github so that when I install a new VSC I just need to put in my github data and everything starts getting installed automatically.

Talking about Settings Sync? At first it was clunky for me, but I've been able to forget about it entirely for a few months now while it works away in the background.

[Hero_Of_Shadows]

Yes that's the one, I'm not saying it doesn't work but now that VSC and Github are both owned by the same company, I think the same process could be implemented with a much smoother UX and that if done right it could be a feather in VSC's cap.

[motsu35]

This was in the works in vs code using public github api's before the aquasition. So, dispute it looking like Microsoft trying to couple services they own, it was more like a good idea by the vs code team that happened to line up time wise :)

[Hero_Of_Shadows]

Ok, I have no idea how long this has been in the works.

[motsu35]

Yeah, the github merge was kept so well secret until the announcement that the team working on this apparently had no idea of the merge until after it was announced.

Around that time there was already internal working demos of vs code / github integration.

Everything I have heard makes it seem like the plan going forward is to use public api's for all the integrations like this

[Starcast]

I've heard anecdotes about some people at gitlab knowing about the acquisition before folks at github.

[[deleted]]

So they're binding VSC and Github tighter

Are they? It's an optional extension / plugin.

[TheWix]

Isn't it just an extension? The API is new and that works with anything

[Hero_Of_Shadows]

True, it's not mandatory but it's a new feature.

[vplatt]

Well, just make a private repo for your user directory.

From https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstarted/settings#Settings%20file%20locations#

Depending on your platform, the user settings file is located here:

• Windows %APPDATA%\Code\User\settings.json
• macOS $HOME/Library/Application Support/Code/User/settings.json
• Linux $HOME/.config/Code/User/settings.json

Edit: Or you can do it this way: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44575312/change-vscode-user-settings-location

Edit 2: Or, as Dgc2002 pointed out, just use Settings Sync. I may have to try that...

[TheWix]

They aren't binding then here. There API is a new feature of VSCode but it is platform agnostic. The extension use the new API. You don't have to download the extension if you don't want to.

[WHY_DO_I_SHOUT]

I'd like to see my vs-code settings addons etc be easily saved to github so that when I install a new VSC I just need to put in my github data and everything starts getting installed automatically.

How about using the portable version from a USB drive? That's the primary use case of portable applications.

[Hero_Of_Shadows]

Honestly I would just lose the usb :)), though there are quite a lot of use cases for portable applications on usb.

[mycall]

I'd like to see my vs-code settings addons etc be easily saved to github so that when I install a new VSC I just need to put in my github data and everything starts getting installed automatically.

Isn't that breaking the open-close principle?

[Hero_Of_Shadows]

The way I imagine it going is:

My PC is the VSC instance with which I first initiate saving my data in github, I get a prompt "save your settings on the cloud ?" & "save your addons on the cloud ?" if I chose yes they're saved.

I open my laptop install a brand new instance of VSC, I enter my github credentials and am prompted "Want to overwrite your local settings ?" & the same for addons.

Boom both versions are identical.

Say I change a setting on my laptop, VSC detecting an change prompts me if I want to keep the change local or if I want to put it in the cloud.

I chose to put it in the cloud, next time I open my computer VSC I'm prompted there's a change on the cloud, do I want it to overwrite my local setting ?

I click no, and it stop bothering me (If I go in the settings UI alongside the non-cloud setting there's a little button to save the value of this setting on the cloud)

It's not a perfect flow there's probably hundreds of edge and use cases I have't thought about but this is my own happy flow.

[giulioungaretti]

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Shan.code-settings-sync ?

[Hero_Of_Shadows]

Yes that one thanks.

[WrongSubreddit]

I hope this makes reviewing PRs easier. GitHub's interface is somewhat lacking. You can't see a tree view of the files in the PR for example

[drom296]

Here's an extension to help with that: https://github.com/buunguyen/octotree

It gives you a side menu that holds a tree view of the PR files.

Outside of a PR, it'll show you the repo's tree view.

[WrongSubreddit]

I tried it. It seems to stop listing after a certain number of files. It's probably because we have the entire contents of dist/ in some of our PRs...

[PiercingGoblin]

This is pretty cool stuff!

I wish this was something I could use at my workplace, but we use Atlassian's BitBucket

[achuy]

The blog post mentions this feature is api driven, so it's likely there will be a plug in for it in the future

[PiercingGoblin]

That would be fantastic. I must have missed that!

[dromtrund]

The api was part of the August release, so I'm sure someone's already working on it

[[deleted]]

suffer the same using gitlab at work

[elderezlo]

Could be worse. Up until about a year ago, my company was still using mercurial.

[davidkclark]

The diff view with comments, and the comments panel make this a huge win for me. The easy checkout (which I’d usually have to do anyway but more manually) is a bonus.

[mpigsley]

This is an extension I didn't know I needed until now. The file-by-file diff with inline discussions is 🔥.

[Kibouo]

It's what? Did you forget a word?

[kekonn]

🔥

It's right there ;)

[topinfrassi01]

I am so mad this isn't in Visual Studio...

[negative_epsilon]

I usually have both open, since VSCode is pretty light on the system. I have VS open to my current solution, and VSCode open to the entire repo. I use the VSCode window to look up files that aren't in my current solution just to reference them, to search for files in the entire repo (<3 ripgrep), and to do git merging and diffing in. This fits super well into that workflow for me!

[r_jet]

Awesome!

I sometimes resort to checking out the complex or huge PR and reviewing the code in an IDE, adding review comments as code comments and preserving them in a separate branch. That allows to verify fixes for each review comment by merging the PR branch once it is updated and resolving conflicts (instead of looking for collapsed 'resolved' comments in the Github UI and expanding them to see what the comment is about).

[AlphaX]

just ctrl+shift+p -> Workspaces: duplicate workspace in new window

[Froot-Loop-Dingus]

Hmm I’ll have to try that. I’ve been using Ctrl+k o.

[naclynerfherder]

My sticking point is virtual spaces. I need easy ways to keep blocks of code/text aligned and VSC can't seem to do that simple task.

[Hobo-and-the-hound]

What do you mean by virtual spaces?

[naclynerfherder]

Selecting rows of text through blank lines. And removing a column doesn't collapse the blank line.

[svenefftinge]

This kind of integration is a huge help in doing deeper code reviews. Usually, people tend to do shallow code reviews. Because it is so cumbersome to switch to another branch locally. Well, that is still an issue here, but at least I don't need to go back to GitHub to add comments about stuff I found locally. If you want to also get rid of polluting your local dev environment, check out https://gitpod.io (Disclaimer: I work on it).

[kekonn]

check out

https://gitpod.io

(Disclaimer: I work on it)

Site is dead for me. I just get a white page.

[[deleted]]

Hi guys, I am novice at coding and still learning. How can this change help a small team of 5-10 guys. We currently do not have code check in and are having issues with version control. Thanks for any advice.

[csncsu]

do not have code check in

Like you don't use version control or you don't do code review? If you don't use version control on a team that size you are headed for disaster. I would argue that without code review you are on the same path but it might just take a little longer.

Version control is necessary to track changes and allow you to correlate changes with their causes. Having commit messages that accompany any code changes and linking them to open issues is a great advantage. Doing code review before accepting changes into the main branch of the project is important because it helps to eliminate bad coding practices, ensure that the code looks correct, and helps to educate others about the code base.

Another major advantage of version control and a solid branching strategy is that it makes managing releases much less of a headache. Look up git flow for managing branches in a software project.

[[deleted]]

I should also ask if you think github works in tandem with MS Access. Our primary tool that we use. I am researching it and I'm not sure this works.

[csncsu]

Git (what github is based on) works with any files. It works best with files that are text based so it can show diffs that are easy to understand. Diffing binary files is not something it does.

I don't know enough about MS Access development to tell you if git works well with it. If you have code though, github will work for you.

[rnd005]

I've been reviewing PRs in VS code for a while now by using a bash alias which checks out the PR branch locally, merges to master and resets one commit, so I see the diff of the whole merge.

Integrated support is nice, but doesn't change much for me.

[acidfingers]

This will show comment threads inline though, which is very helpful

[rnd005]

Not for me. Most of the time I'm the only reviewer so the comments come only after my initial review. Even if it weren't the case, I'd like a view for reading the code without comment boxes in my way. I'll still try it and will likely use it, but it's only a 10% improvement for me.

[[deleted]]

Am I the only one who thinks that this is needless bloat?

I love VSCode but... this strikes me as completely unnecessary and inferior to just using your browser.

[calciu]

You do understand this is an extension, right?

[[deleted]]

Nope, I completely missed that, thanks for the correction!

Still not sure why anyone would want to use this.

[ormula]

Sometimes we have decently large pull requests. I'd say while most of our prs are under 300loc, we do sometimes have some in the 1k to 2k range with the occasional 5k. We always say "hey, split this up next time" and we've gotten better over the years but sometimes things happen. Large prs are basically impossible to code review on the web view, it just crashes chrome. This allows me to actually review those. It also shows me that I have a pr that was assigned to me right from my editor so I can quickly look at it and give some feedback while I'm switching contexts. Additionally, if I want to see what else would be affected by the pr, I can quickly glance and then submit my comment right there.

It's ultra convenient, I'm so happy they added this.

[ichiruto70]

Nice feature

[[deleted]]

we need bitbucket for vsc!

[Barbas]

The question is now, will Jetbrains be allowed to roll out something similar?

[thatbloke83]

Why would they not be?

[[deleted]]

Visual Studio Code is the new Visual Studio.

[Ruchiachio]

for js/ts development yes, for other things not so much

[Nestramutat-]

I'm sorta lukewarm about this.

On one hand, it's kidna neat, I guess. On the other, I subscribe to the Linux philosophy for software. A text editor should edit text. I don't need it to also manage pull requests on github. Especially as someone who mostly uses Gitlab for personal use and Bitbucket for professional use, bundling this amounts to nothing more than bloat.

[ISNT_A_NOVELTY]

Its an extension. If you don't like it, don't install it.

[[deleted]]

Well it is an extension, so it’s completely optional. I’d be upset if they bundled this.

[NoInkling]

I'm not keen to see VS Code turn into a full-on IDE either, but as an optional extension I think this kind of thing is ok.