Lab 2

For Lab 2 of DPS909, we had to build VSCode as user and as a developer with any extension we wished to install. The extensions I chose to implement is:

• C/C++: Since I intended to play around with VSCode using C/C++ and language support for C/C++ that provides debugging and language services, such as: go to definition/declaration and line by line code stepping, was obvious.
• yarn: A dependency management tool, which was recommended when installing VSCode as Developer.
• express: In order to test web services an extension that can host the current workspace is a no brainer.
• Debugger for Chrome: allows me to debug JavaScript code in the Google Chrome. Would have been useful for release 0.1.
• ESLint: I got the extension for continence as the ability to find a global install of missing dependency is always nice.

While I had no issue building it as a user, building it as a developer has brought no end of trouble. When starting with VSCode, I have downloaded all the prerequisites that were listed in their GitHub contributor page. I then proceeded to download the project and installed all dependencies using Yarn. This was when I ran into my first issue, Python was not found despite being in the PATH variable. I have tried several potential paths, but as it turns out including “.exe” in the path was the cause. Yarn ran after the path was set but at certain point the installation failed with a long list of errors. Its cause was that it lacked the C/C++ resources that it should have gotten from visual studios. This was fix by installing the 2017 version instead of the Visual studios 2015 C/C++ tools set.

Testing VSCode was uneventful, as I simple entered the command “.\scripts\code.bat” and it launched without a hitch.