Extensions

Integrate your Visual Studio Code extension in the Source Control Management input

June 13, 2024

For a new Visual Studio Code extension called CommitHelper, I wanted to integrate the extension in the Source Control Management (SCM) input. The extension should provide a list of predefined commit messages from which the user can select by using a slash / in the input field. Show image Source Control Management Input I got the idea from the GitHub Pull Requests extension that provides a similar experience when tagging/linking issues.

It is Demo Time; how to make your live code demos smoother

December 13, 2023

I have had many sessions at conferences over the years. One thing I always liked to do is perform live demos. Although I know things could fail, it is also fun to show the audience how things work. Those live coding demos take a lot of preparation to ensure everything goes smoothly.

Using Vite for bundling your Visual Studio Code extension

October 18, 2023

important The CJS build of Vite’s Node API is no longer supported and will be removed in version 6. As Visual Studio Code extensions do not support ESM, my recommendation is use an alternative bundler such as webpack, tsup, or esbuild instead of Vite. A couple of weeks ago, I started looking into the possibility of retrieving the Content Collections from Astro and generating content-types for Front Matter CMS.

Things to know when using custom icons for Visual Studio Code commands

October 6, 2023

You can specify an icon when adding commands to your Visual Studio Code extension. These icons are rendered when you register the commands, such as the explorer title bar, document title bar, and more. info More info on registering command can be found in the VSCode documentation. You have three options for specifying the icon:

Organize and Optimize: Splitting Visual Studio Code Extension Settings into Multiple Categories

July 22, 2023

I have always been adding my Visual Studio Code extension settings to the contributes.configuration object, but I was missing a way to organize the settings in multiple sections/groups. That way, the end user gets a better overview of all settings grouped by their category. When reading the VSCode contributes.configuration schema documentation, I spotted the following: “This section can either be a single object, representing a single category of settings, or an array of objects, representing multiple categories of settings.

Use command URI in a Visual Studio Code webview to open files and links

February 23, 2023

If you work with webviews, you may want to open a link to a website or file within the same instance of Visual Studio Code. There are a couple of ways to achieve this, such as posting a message to the extension host or using the command URI option of your webview.