Microsoft releases VS Code update roadmap for Java developers: improved development experience, remote development, security

Recently, Microsoft released the Visual Studio Code update roadmap for Java developers, showing some important new features and improvements. The roadmap covers July to December 2021. Microsoft said that the next few months will focus on development experience, remote development, testing, security and other aspects.

Continuously improve the basic development experience

Internal cycle development has a substantial impact on the daily work of developers, so Microsoft will continue to improve the basic internal cycle development experience, including continuous investment in better code completion/navigation, package import, compilation, debugging, testing, etc. . In addition, Microsoft will further improve the experience of using Visual Studio Code Java to handle large-scale and complex-structured projects, which will help developers of enterprise-level code bases, because such code bases are usually more complex in structure. At the same time, Microsoft will further improve performance and reliability.

Build tool support

Build tools and dependency management are a key part of the Java developer experience, and Microsoft is seeking to increase the breadth and depth of this field. In terms of breadth, Microsoft plans to increase support for Gradle. Gradle's initial feature set will focus on task management and Gradle file creation. In depth, Microsoft will continue to improve the existing Maven tool experience and add new features to support more scenarios, such as switching configuration files.

Remote development/Codespaces

Remote development has always been a very popular feature in Visual Studio Code, which allows developers to use containers in a full-featured development environment. In the next few months, the Visual Studio Code Java team will work to support more Java versions and the Spring framework in the container so that developers can access these technologies in remote development scenarios. In June, Microsoft released support for Java 16 in the remote development container.

In addition, Github Codespaces is a configurable online development environment that allows developers to develop entirely in the cloud. Visual Studio Code plays an important role in Gtihub Codespaces because it provides a basic code editing experience. The Visual Studio Code Java team is working to provide support for Java language extensions in Codespaces so that Java developers can find all the Java-related tools they need.

test

In terms of testing, the Visual Studio Code Java team is actively applying VS's new testing API. This means that when Java developers process tests in Visual Studio Code, they can not only see a richer test-related UI, but also get more test-related data, such as test coverage.

Debugging-exploring virtual threads

In order to provide better debugging performance in Visual Studio Code Java, the team will also explore the possibility of enabling virtual threads (Project Loom). Its goal is to improve the efficiency of developers and further optimize the debugging experience of Visual Studio Code Java.

Safety

Visual Studio Code attaches great importance to security, and as much as possible to ensure that users browse and edit code safely. The new Workspace Trust feature allows developers to decide whether the project allows or restricts code execution.

At the same time, Visual Studio Code Java has also begun to work on supporting these new security features. First, when a developer opens a Java project in an untrusted workspace, the Java language server will run in a restricted mode and provide limited support, and certain functions will be disabled.

In addition, in the past June, Visual Studio Code Java provided some new features, such as the limited Java language support for untrusted workspaces mentioned above, and Java 16 support in remote development containers.

Reference link: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/java/java-on-visual-studio-code-update-june-2021/