Using Visual Studio Code

[RandyT]

Curious if anyone has attempted to get Visual Studio Code working as a development editor for NT. Not finding much on this via search.

Visual Studio Code is free to use and thereby much more accessible to average users. It is a very capable C# development editor. Would appreciate if anyone can shed light on what the potential challenges would be to use it for NT development.

Thanks

[NinjaTrader_Jesse]

Hello RandyT,

Thank you for the post.

While I am unsure if anyone has attempted this with VS Code for debugging specifically, you can certainly use it for a text editor just like any other text editor. As long as the NinjaScript editor is open in the background, it should pick up file changes to compile. You just wouldn't have C# autocompletion or intellesense relevant to the NinjaTrader objects in that use case.

You are able to use the Free community edition of Visual Studio with NinjaTrader as that natively works with the NinjaScript editors "Visual Studio" launcher button. If you have not reviewed Microsofts community edition of visual studio, that is generally what we suggest for users who do not want to license visual studio but still want the standard editor features it supplies. This is a new product Microsoft started releasing since VS 2015.

I look forward to being of further assistance.

[RandyT]

Jesse, thanks for the quick response.

Actually, I was confused by the fact that the editor launcher button doesn't seem to find my VS Code install. But after starting VS Code the conventional way, I find that even Intellisense for C# and Ninjascript works. (perhaps better than it does in the NT Editor).

So I am on my way here. Will see if I can get the debugger working.

Thanks

[NinjaCustomer]

RandyT did you get the Visual Studio Code debugger working? are there any downsides to visual studio code over 2019? I prefer it as an IDE since I have to use it for other languages as well.

[RandyT]

RandyT did you get the Visual Studio Code debugger working? are there any downsides to visual studio code over 2019? I prefer it as an IDE since I have to use it for other languages as well.

I was not able to get VSCode to work reliably, but honestly did not give a lot of effort to it. I agree that VSCode is a preferable option to Community and IMO makes a lot more sense for NT to support this option over Community. But the proper way to fire up VS is through the button at the top of the NT Editor. That button is hardwired to look for Community. This appears to assure that some dependencies are loaded into VS to enable intellisense, etc.

I didn't get the debugger to do much of anything useful and honestly find that prints are usually enough. Again, it would be nice if this was a well integrated option, but not a showstopper for me.

[NinjaCustomer]

I do find the debugger is useful for me sometimes but I've settled into using VS Code for most of the editing, since I'm just more comfortable with it and the themes are better (some are pretty awesome actually) and git is better supported by default. But if I need to debug something I can always fire up VS 2019.