Skip to content

Node.js Tools 1.2 Beta

Pre-release
Pre-release
Compare
Choose a tag to compare
@mousetraps mousetraps released this 20 Jun 23:01
v1.2Beta
fbd9138

We are pleased to announce the release of Node.js Tools 1.2 Beta for Visual Studio.

Downloads

1. Download Visual Studio 2015 (requires Update 2 or higher)

2. Download Node.js Tools 1.2 Beta

Looking for Visual Studio "15" support?

 

RELEASE NOTES
Node.js Tools for Visual Studio (NTVS) is a free, open-source plug-in that turns Visual Studio into a Node.js Integrated Development Environment (IDE). It supports a broad range of features including editing, IntelliSense, cross platform and remote debugging, edit and continue, npm integration, profiling, TypeScript, and an integrated REPL window. NTVS also includes a set of project templates that make it easy to quickly create and deploy websites to Microsoft Azure Websites or Cloud Services.

NTVS 1.2 Beta is available for:

  • Visual Studio Community 2015 (requires Update 2 or later)
  • Visual Studio 2015 Express for Web (requires Update 2 or later)
  • Visual Studio 2015 Professional or above (requires Update 2 or later)

Note that NTVS is not available for Visual Studio Express for Windows (or Windows Desktop)

Changes since 1.2 Alpha

We expect this release of NTVS to provide a better user experience and general stability of the product.

Highlights include:

Faster, better ES6 IntelliSense!

Whether you were running into performance issues or craving the latest and greatest JavaScript goodness, the new ES6 IntelliSense experience is now on by default, and better than ever! The new ES6 IntelliSense experience takes advantage of type definition files to provide better and more performant IntelliSense for the most popular Node.js frameworks, such as Commander, Express, jQuery and Knockout.

Whenever you require a new npm package, the associated "typings" will be automatically downloaded to your project.
image

And so long as the typings are available, you'll be able to see the relevant completions next time you 'require' a module.
image

❗Known Issue
IntelliSense for locally required files does not currently work, and will be available in Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 RTM (tracked by #1076).

As a workaround, try adding a tsconfig.json to the root of your NTVS project with these options:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "allowJs": true,
    "moduleResolution": "node",
    "noEmit": true
  },
  "exclude": ["node_modules"]
}

And right click Save As this file into C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TypeScript to replace the existing typescriptServices.js in that directory.

Love it? Hate it? Hungry? 🍔 🍜 🍹 Please, please, please let us know what you think! 🍬

More reliable debugging

Running into flaky or laggy debug experiences? You so want to download this release. We've fixed many miscellaneous issues that should provide an overall better debugging experiences. We're committed to providing the best debugging experience possible, so please let us know how we're doing!

Improved Unit Testing experiences

While it's generally best practice to avoid writing bugs altogether, some of us our not omniscient, and find unit tests to be pretty helpful. 😉 So we've made some improvements to the unit testing experience, including tape support thanks to @jcansdale (#989).

image

This release also improves support other testing frameworks, including providing a custom mocha path in "mocha.json".

{
    "ui": "tdd",
    "timeout": 300000,
    "reporter": "xunit",
    "path": "optional path to where mocha is installed"
}

.npm everywhere

We gave you .npm commands Node.js Interactive Window, and you told us that's just not enough... It must be everywhere. So now, thanks to #808, we'll finally be able to use npm everywhere, just as it should be.

Significantly improved stability and performance

All across the product numerous issues have been fixed. We expect this release to provide both a much better user experience and improved stability.

Known Issues

  • #1076: IntelliSense For Locally Required Files needs VS 2015 Update 3 RTM+
  • #928 Error TS5055: Cannot Write file error displayed in error pane when using ES6 Preview Intellisense. This does not effect building or running projects.
  • #125 Attach debugger to Azure deployment via Server Explorer fails. You can attach manually as outlined on the Advanced Debugging page.
  • #434 Profiling does not resolve function names if using 64-bit Node. Install and profile 32-bit Node to work around this issue.
  • ReSharper is known to cause code-completion, memory, and performance issues when enabled alongside NTVS. We recommend disabling at least ReSharper's JavaScript functionality if you are having problems.
  • NTVS does not fully support build and test features of Visual Studio Team Services, but we are working to improve the experience. If you are having trouble, please file an issue so we can get to the bottom of it.
  • We are constantly working to improve our code-completion and formatting to support the wide variety of modules and code styles. Please file an issue if you are running into unexpected behavior.

For a full list of issues, head on over to our issue tracker

Thank you!

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who took their time to report issues, send feedback for this release. We very much appreciate your help!

Help make NTVS Better

NTVS is an open source project and we’re always willing to take high quality contributions. If you’d like to contribute, please check out our issue tracker for outstanding bugs and features which can be implemented. You can also help make NTVS better by reporting issues or helping out your fellow users on GitHub.

Miscellaneous thoughts on the release? Send us a note or give us a shout-out on twitter!

Assets 2
Loading