We are pleased to announce that the March 2021 release of the Python Extension for Visual Studio Code is now available. You can  download the Python extension  from the Marketplace, or install it directly from the extension gallery in Visual Studio Code. If you already have the Python extension installed, you can also get the latest update by restarting Visual Studio Code. You can learn more about  Python support in Visual Studio Code  in the documentation.  

This release largely focused on bug fixes and stabilization work in our Python, Pylance and Jupyter extensions, and includes a preview of improved Jedi language server support for our Python Insiders.  

If you’re interested, you can check the full list of improvements in our changelog. 

A preview of improved Jedi language server support 

We now have more have robust and performant language support for Jedi language server users on the Insiders program of the Python extension!  

Our team has been working hard to unify the way that language servers communicate with the Python extension. As a result, we’ve updated Jedi to abide by the Language Server Protocol (LSP). Alongside improved performance for features like completions and out-of-the-box error reporting, this also update simplifies the Python extension by eliminating the need to install pylint, ctags and rope. 

If you want to try this out, you can join our Insiders program by opening the command palette (View > Command Palette…) and run the “Python: Switch to Insiders Weekly Channel”. Once the insiders build finishes downloading, you will be prompted to reload the window. If you haven’t set a value to the language server setting, you will be then using the new Jedi language server. Otherwise, you can set the “python.languageServer” setting to “JediLSP”. 

We look forward to bringing this experience to the stable version of the Python extension, so if you try this out and see any issues with it, please file a bug report.  

This exciting change leverages an existing implementation of Jedi behind a language server, so we’d like to thank Samuel Roeca and David Halter for being great partners on this initiative! 

Other Changes and Enhancements 

We have also added small enhancements and fixed issues requested by users that should improve your experience working with Python in Visual Studio Code. Some notable changes include: 

• Add python.tensorBoard.logDirectory setting to omit log directory prompt when starting TensorBoard sessions (#15476) 
• The Python extension is now activated when the following files are found: Pipfile, setup.py, requirements.txt, manage.py, app.py. (thanks Dhaval Soneji) (#4765) 
• Add configuration debugpyPath. (thanks djplt) (#14631) 
• Fix Mypy linter pointing to wrong column number. (thanks anttipessa, haalto, JeonCD and junskU) (#14978)

We’re constantly A/B testing new features. If you see something different that was not announced by the team, you may be part of the experiment! To see if you are part of an experiment, you can check the first lines in the Python extension output channel. If you wish to opt-out of A/B testing, you can open the user settings.json file (View > Command Palette… and run Preferences: Open Settings (JSON)) and set the “python.experiments.enabled” setting to false.   

Be sure to  download the Python extension  for Visual Studio Code now to try out the above improvements. If you run into any problems or have suggestions, please file an issue on the  Python VS Code GitHub  page.