Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code is a popular source code editor. It is free and open source and runs on your desktop and is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. It has a rich ecosystem of extensions for languages such as C++, Fortran, R, C#, Matlab, Java, Python, PHP, and Go. If you are new to text editors, we recommend to start with this one.

  • Please visit the download page for installation instructions. But please note that Visual Studio Code sends data to Microsoft.

  • Please also browse the page about Using Git source control in VS Code.

  • VSCodium is the same software without Microsoft tracking.

  • Windows (and any operating system that has the option): when installing, select the option “Add to PATH” (this is default).

Screenshot of configuration options when setting up Visual Studio Code

When installing Visual Studio Code, I have selected the options “Built-in terminal” and “Track your code with Git”.

Using VS Code as a git editor

This will set VS Code as the editor that Git starts. It will start a new tab, and Git will wait until you save and close that tab. Git for Windows on Windows may automatically set this if you select it as an editor:

$ git config --global core.editor "code --wait"