Visual Studio Code 1.94 launched with big startup speed improvements

Microsoft has released the latest version of Visual Studio Code, known as the September 2024 release or version 1.94. It brings plenty of improvements, all of which you can read about below. One notable feature that you should look out for is the big startup performance improvements thanks to the switch to the ECMAScript module (ESM) format.

Here is the complete list of changes in this update:

• Find in Explorer - Quickly find files in the Explorer view with the improved Find control.
• Source Control Graph - More filtering options and interactivity in the Source Control Graph.
• Python test coverage - Run Python tests with coverage and get rich results in the editor.
• ESM - Faster VS Code startup thanks to the migration to ESM.
• Account preference - Specify which account to use for an extension.
• Copilot in Native REPL - Get code completions and Inline Chat in the Native REPL.
• Improved chat context - Drag & drop files or use IntelliSense for more relevant chat context.
• Test environment setup - Get help with setting up a test framework for your workspace.

In the last update, we mentioned that Visual Studio included some major AI improvements, and version 1.94 continues to improve the GitHub Copilot experience.

With this update, you can now attach additional files as context for a chat prompt by dragging files or editor tabs from the workbench to the chat. This feature is helpful if you have any queries about specific files in your projects. When you ask, Copilot has some contextual grounding to answer your questions better.

Another improvement related to Copilot pertains to the read-eval-print-loop (REPL) editor. The REPL editor is used by the Python extension in Visual Studio Code, and it now supports Copilot Inline CHat and code completions directly in the input box.

If you want to download this update, get it from the Visual Studio Code website. If you already have it installed, look out for any notifications about the update