Microsoft has released a new update of its Visual Studio Code (VS Code) code editor for Windows, Windows on Arm, macOS and Linux.
The latest update brings VS Code to version 1.51[1], which contains fixes for "housekeeping GitHub issues" that have emerged since GitHub Codespaces was released.
Microsoft in September aired its plans to kill off Visual Studio Codespaces[2] – the rebranded version of Visual Studio Online – and merge it with GitHub's take on the online code-editing service, GitHub Codespaces.
Microsoft opted to consolidate Visual Studio Codespaces with GitHub Codespaces to "eliminate confusion, simplify the experience for everyone, and make more rapid progress to address customer feedback".
Visual Studio Codespaces users have until February 2021 to move to GitHub Codespaces. After that, the Visual Studio Codespaces offering on Azure will end.
The VS Code team said it has "worked with our partners at GitHub on GitHub Codespaces, which ended up being more involved than originally anticipated".
The team says it will continue working on GitHub housekeeping for part of the November iteration of VS Code.
Microsoft unveiled GitHub Codespaces in May[3], offering developers a cloud-hosted development environment that launches quickly inside GitHub so that developers can start contributing to projects immediately.
It offers developers a containerized, browser-based version of the VS Code editor, but developers can also opt to use their desktop IDEs instead to start a codespace in GitHub and connect to it from their desktops via VS Code.
Codespaces in GitHub supports VS Code's code completion and navigation, extensions, and terminal access.
GitHub Codespaces is still in a limited public beta. It's described as an "integrated development environment (IDE) on GitHub". During the beta phase, GitHub Codespaces is free to use. However, when it becomes generally available, users