We are pleased to announce that the March 2018 release of the Python Extension for Visual Studio Code is now available from the marketplace and the gallery. You can the download the Python extension from the marketplace, or install it directly from the extension gallery in Visual Studio Code. You can learn more about Python support in Visual Studio Code in the VS Code documentation.

In this release have closed a total of 61 issues which make the Preview debugger easier to try out, and includes various fixes and enhancements.

Improvements to Preview Debugger

In the February release of the extension we made a Preview of version of our debugger available demonstrating faster debugging performance but limited feature support. In this release we have added further enhancements to the preview.

Debug configurations have been added for more app types: Django, PySpark, Pyramid, Watson, and Scrapy. The preview debugger is also now bundled with the extension so you no longer need to manually install ptvsd to try it out, simply add one of the Experimental Debugger configurations and start debugging:

We’ve also added support for Django template debugging, you can set breakpoints in a Django app and view variables in the templates:

We’ve also added the following capabilities:

• Support for debugging unit tests
• Jinja template debugging support for apps other than Flask

Various Fixes and Enhancements

We have also fixed several small enhancements and fixed issues requested by users that should improve your experience working with Python in Visual Studio Code. The full list of improvements is listed in our changelog, some notable issues are:

• Pipenv improvements: added the ability to read Pipfile name from the environment variable (#999), development-time packages are installed into dev-packages (#1110)
• Add support for the “it” locale #1152
• Improved extension load time #931
• Unit test discovery banner is suppressed when test discovery failure is caused by syntax errors in test code #704
• Conda installer is not used in non-conda environments #969
• Prevent extension from displaying the wrong interpreter #981
• Fixed high CPU Usage in wmic process on Windows #1036
• Stop autocomplete from appearing in comments #1123

Be sure to download the Python extension for VS Code now to try out the above improvements. If you run into any issues be sure to file an issue on the Python VS Code GitHub page.