Python Engineering at Microsoft: Python in Visual Studio Code – November 2018 Release

We are pleased to announce that the November 2018 release of the Python Extension for Visual Studio Code is now available. You can download the Python extension from the Marketplace, or install it directly from the extension gallery in Visual Studio Code. You can learn more about Python support in Visual Studio Code in the documentation.

This release was a quality focused release, we have closed a total of 28 issues, improving startup performance and fixing various bugs related to interpreter detection and Jupyter support. Keep on reading to learn more!

Improved Python Extension Load Time

We have started using webpack to bundle the TypeScript files in the extension for faster load times, this has significantly improved the extension download size, installation time and extension load time.  You can see the startup time of the extension by running the Developer: Startup Performance command. Below shows before and after times of extension loading (measured in milliseconds):

One downside to this approach is that reporting & troubleshooting issues with the extension is harder as the call stacks output by the Python extension are minified. To address this we have added the Python: Enable source map support for extension debugging command. This command will load source maps for for better error log output. This slows down load time of the extension, so we provide a helpful reminder to disable it every time the extension loads with source maps enabled:

These download, install, and startup performance improvements will help you get to writing your Python code faster, and we have even more improvements planned for future releases.

Other Changes and Enhancements

We have also added small enhancements and fixed issues requested by users that should improve your experience working with Python in Visual Studio Code. The full list of improvements is listed in our changelog; some notable changes include:

• Update Jedi to 0.13.1 and parso 0.3.1. (#2667)
• Make diagnostic message actionable when opening a workspace with no currently selected Python interpreter. (#2983)
• Fix problems with virtual environments not matching the loaded python when running cells. (#3294)
• Make nbconvert in a installation not prevent notebooks from starting. (#3343)

Be sure to download the Python extension for Visual Studio Code now to try out the above improvements. If you run into any problems, please file an issue on the Python VS Code GitHub page.

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