Microsoft has released the roadmap for the plans for Java in Visual Studio Code for the rest of the year. Improvements focus on better code completion and navigation, package import, compiling, debugging and testing.

Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is Microsoft's free-to-use source-code editor. The name is the misleading as it has nothing to do with Visual Studio, but Microsoft's continual work is slowly turning it into a good (if quirky) working environment.

As reported in yesterday's coverage of the JVM Ecosystem 2021 Report almost a quarter of JavaDevelopers in the annual survey conducted by Snyk use VS Code, a significant increase from the previous year.

According to Nick Zhu, Senior Program Manager, Developer Division at Microsoft the Java roadmap for VS Code starts with a focus on improving

"the fundamental inner-loop development experience as it is essentially impacts our developers’ daily routine".

In practical terms this refers to better code completion and navigation, package import, compiling, debugging and testing. There's also a focus on how to improve the handling of Java projects of large scale and complicated structures, though Zhu didn't go into details as to how this would be achieved.

Build and dependency management is one area on the list, with plans to add some support for Gradle, starting with task management, and Gradle file authoring. Maven support is also being improved with changes to using Maven tools, alongside new features to support additional scenarios such as switching profiles.

Developers using remote development via a container will get the option of using more Java versions as well as Spring framework in the containers. Microsoft just released support for Java 16 in the remote dev container. Support for Java languages extensions in Github Codespaces is also being added.

For debugging, the development team is "exploring the possibility of enabling virtual threads powered by the new Project Loom. Our goal is to increase the developer productivity and further optimize the debugging experience in Visual Studio Code Java." Testing improvements will come when Visual Studio Code Java adopts the new Testing APIs introduced recently.

The final part of the roadmap concerns security, with a new Workspace Trust feature that can be used to choose whether your project should allow or restrict code execution.

More Information

Visual Studio Code Website

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