Julia VS Code extension version v0.17 released

We just released v0.17 of the Julia VS Code extension to the marketplace.

Global variable support in the debugger variable explorer

The Variables pane in the integrated debugger now supports global variables:

Globals shows global variables used in the current function’s scope, whereas Global (...) shows all global variables defined in the current scope’s enclosing module. All of these can be edited, but be vary of unexpected behaviour.

Debug and run buttons above Julia files

We added a run and debug button above the file editor area when you open a Julia file that makes it easier to run the currently active file:

Support for step in targets in the debugger

VSCode now supports a new “Step into Targets” debugger UI, which you can access by opening the context menu in an editor while debugging. It will allow you to step into a function call on the current line:

Profile viewing support

We added new functionality that allows you to save profiling results in a *.cpuprofile file. Recent versions of VS Code have built-in support to analyze and visualize these profiling result files.

The easiest way to use this functionality is the @profview macro, which executes your code under the Julia profiler and then saves the results as a *.cpuprofile file. To use it, start a Julia REPL, and then call @profview like this:


julia> @profview my_function_that_should_be_profiled()

Alternatively you can call the function view_profile in the REPL which will save the profiling results from the previous profiling session.

Once you have created a *.cpuprofile file with one of these methods, you can open it in VS Code. The initial view shown is a tabular display of the profiling results. The search bar at the top allows you to filter the profiling results and provides a rich query language for more advanced queries:

You can also look at the same information in a flamegraph by clicking the little fire button next to the search area. The first time you do so, you will be asked to install another extension, go ahead and do that. The flamegraph visualization then looks like this:

Special thanks to Valentin and Connor for their help with this feature!

Inline result styling improvements

The stylings of inline result bubbles are greatly improved;

the left-border color will make it easier to distinguish them from the actual code:

Stackframe highlighting for inline evaluations

Now our inline execution will highlight all lines in backtrace when you hit an error:

If you hover your mouse over any of the lines, the detail of the error will show up and you can goto whichever frame in a backtrace by clicking the links:

Additionally, the topmost buttons allow you to go to first/previous/next/last frames, and clear all the traces:

We also added the improvement to cut off the julia-vscode extension’s internal lines from backtrace so that they won’t appear in users’ stackframe.

Configuration option to exclude folders from linting

We’ve added an new configuration option julia.lint.disabledDirs.

It specifies sub-directories in a package directory where only basic linting is enabled, and this will drastically lowers the chance for false positives.

By default, test and docs are set, so most problematic errors (e.g. “Missing reference …”) will be suppressed there.

Note this config is only a temporary fix for our environment handling – we will work on redesigning the whole environment handling, which will hopefully get rid of most of those false positives, and then we may probably remove this configuration in the future.

Extension API

This extension now exports an API, which can be consumed by other VSCode extensions (see the VSCode docs for more info). Version 1 of the API exports the async getJuliaPath() and async getEnvironment() functions.

Bugfixes

We’ve also fixed a plethora of issues across the entire extension.

98 Likes

Wooh ! This is absolutely awesome. Most of this features were not even on the roadmap few months ago, it is amazing to see such improvements.
As part of this community and an intensive VSCode user as my main Julia IDE, I want to deeply thanks all of you guys, your work is greatly appreciated !
Take all the good vibes !

13 Likes

Is there a plan to enable using the linter for the test and docs folders in the future? I think it would be very useful. :slight_smile:

1 Like

Yes, fixing the whole env handling situation is our top item after Juliacon! But that won’t be easy, so it will take a while.

8 Likes

Sounds unconvincing after delivering so many enhancements recently. I bet you will surprise us again in the next round! Congrats with this release. It looks awesome.

2 Likes

Thank you to all the developers for a really nice release!

This already improves the situation a lot! The one case where it still gives me some “visual noise” is the examples folder (which of course now I can exclude). I generally like to keep a folder named examples with some scripts for users to get started. I started wondering whether it will still be useful to keep the disabledDirs option for those scenarios, but became convinced that I’m just being sloppy and the examples folder should have their own project file.

Maybe, after the whole Project / Pkg infrastructure and vscode become fully compatible, the linter could be a way to “nudge” users to create Project files for their scripts.

3 Likes

Hello dear pfitzseb & davidanthoff :slight_smile: Thanks for the new update, it’s really awesome :slight_smile:

I made a buglist about version 0.16.9, sadly they’re not fixed, but don’t worry :smiley: You are making a really nice extension.

I’ll share here again:

I’m replying to this thread instead of opening a new one, to let David do the big announcement when suitable. :wink:

I was pleasantly surprised to see this morning that v1.0.0 had been released for everyone a couple of days ago! Not having seen any release notes in the docs repository (unlike for v0.16 and v0.17), I guess that there are no new features, and that this is mainly 0.17 with bugfixes and a promise of stable API until another major release - if semver is followed.

So, just many thanks, cheers and congratulations to the development team! I think that an official announcement of this remarkable milestone is well deserved, and I’m looking forward to it - when JuliaCon leaves some time for developers to prepare it properly. :partying_face:

5 Likes

The Profile viewing support is very useful. Unfortunately, the help information about how to use the filter function cannot be opened now. Could you please provide where can find the manual? Thanks!

The search bar at the top allows you to filter the profiling results and provides a rich query language for more advanced queries