Visual Studio now supports debugging Linux apps; Code editor now open source

NEW YORK—Developers can now debug apps running on Linux servers or IoT devices from the comfort of Visual Studio. Microsoft today released a preview of a Visual Studio extension that adds remote debugging using GDB of Linux software.

This was one of many announcements made at Microsoft's Connect developer event today as the company aims to give its developer platform the broadest reach it's ever had, able to handle Android, iOS, and Linux development, alongside the more expected Azure, Office, and Windows. Visual Studio 2015 already made big strides in this direction, and Microsoft is pushing ahead to try to make Visual Studio the best development environment around.

The free and cross-platform Chromium-based code editor Visual Studio Code is being open sourced today. A new build has also been published, adding an extension mechanism to the editor. There are already some 60 extensions available, including new language support (such as Go language), richer debugging, code linters, and more.

Extensions for Visual Studio Code are found in a new place for distributing both free and paid extensions: Visual Studio Marketplace. This will replace the old Visual Studio Gallery and will be a single place for finding extensions for all versions of Visual Studio (Community, Professional, and Enterprise), Visual Studio Team Services (formerly known as Visual Studio Online), and Visual Studio Code.

In addition to extensions, Microsoft will also be using Marketplace to sell a new kind of Visual Studio subscription. Visual Studio Professional and Enterprise are both currently available through MSDN subscriptions bought on an annual basis. These subscriptions also provide development access to many other pieces of Microsoft software. The company is now offering Visual Studio Professional and Enterprise as cloud subscriptions, with options to pay month-by-month or annually. These subscriptions will include some of the things found in MSDN subscriptions, such as Azure credits and Pluralsight training, as well as access to Visual Studio Team Services.

Last year, Microsoft open sourced a big chunk of .NET and ported it to Linux and OS X. .NET Core 5 and ASP.NET 5 have now both reached Release Candidate status for both of those platforms and, of course, Windows. This comes with a "Go-Live License," meaning that they can be deployed and used in production environments and should cleanly upgrade to the final builds when available.

To make all-device development easier to access, Microsoft is releasing a new Visual Studio bundle called Dev Essentials, which includes Visual Studio Community Edition, the free tier of Visual Studio Team Services, and from early 2016, monthly Azure credits. It will include everything needed to develop for Windows, Android, and iOS.

Building for iOS does, however, still require access to a Mac; Visual Studio remotely controls the OS X toolchain to perform the actual building and application deployment. For those who don't want to manage Macs of their own, Microsoft has partnered with MacinCloud to provide access to OS X build agents for $30/month.

In addition to using the built-in support for Android and iOS development, Visual Studio is often used in conjunction with the Xamarin platform for cross-platform apps. Xamarin 4 was released yesterday, adding a new crash and performance analytics tool, Xamarin Insights, version 2 of its Xamarin.Forms library. It adds new iOS 9 and Android Marshmallow controls and a new build agent for performing software builds on OS X from within Visual Studio that should be easier to set up and more reliable than the current mechanism.