Oct 5 2015

Setup your VS 2015 Based Web Development Environment

Category: JavaScript | Asp.netFrancesco @ 06:17

This time we have a new option to develop and edit our code together with the last version of Visual Studio: Visual Studio Code. A lightweight code editor with both syntax highlighting and intellisense that supports more than 30 languages. It opens .Net development also to Mac and Linux systems, but it is a valid option to VS 2015 also in Windows systems since it opens as fast as notepad and enables you to make quick changes without waiting for VS 2015 initialization. Moreover, it connects easily with Git repositories and Visual Studio on line. Thus, I suggest to add both tools to your development environment. Both VS 2015 Community edition and Visual Studio Code may be freely downloaded here(you may find also further infos and documentation at this link).

The conversion from VS 2013 to VS 2015 is easier than previous migrations, really straightforward, so there are no drawbacks and no reasons for remaining tied to VS 2013.

It is convenient to move to VS 2015 also if you don’t plan to move to Asp.net 5/MVC 6 that are still in beta, since VS 2015 offers interesting enhancements also for old projects. Below I list some of them:

  • Useful suggestions next to errors
  • Performance infos on the line you are debugging. No need to launch performance specific tools to discover performance bottlenecks: you may discover them while you are debugging your application, since VS shows the computer time spent since your last debugging step(previous breakpoint or previous line if you are stepping) next to the line you are debugging. Moreover, on each line you have access to a performance window with several performance infos.
  • Native TypeScript support. In VS 2013, TypeScript compiler and intellisense were accessible through  an extension while in VS 2015 their support is native. However, also if TypeScript compiler is immediately available you have to run manually your compilation, or to write your script to run them automatically. Therefore, I recommend to install also Web Essentials where you may configure TypeScript files for being compiled automatically on project build, or on file save.
  • Require.Js and Angular.Js support (intellisense and error checking).
  • Node.Js support.
  • C# enhancements.

The list above is not exhaustive but collects just the more interesting features for web development. For more infos forrlow the documentation links here.

 

If you use Less(or Scss, JSX, ES6 and CoffeeScript), please notice that VS 2015 Less tools are not included anymore in Web essentials but in a different package.

OOOPSSs I forgot….If you need a repository and a development team support tool you may use a free 5 person Visual Studio On Line account.

 

Thus Summing up:

  1. VS 2015 and Visual Studio Code
  2. Web Essentaials 2015
  3. Node.Js tools for Visual Studio.
  4. Web Compiler extension (Less, Scss, JSX, ES6 and CoffeeScript).
  5. Visual Studio On Line account.

 

That’s all for now!

Enjoy ! In a short time a new series of posts about Asp.Net 5/ Mvc 6

Francesco

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