1. Visual Studio Code for PowerShell
Work as an Infrastructure Engineer for a large Healthcare Insurance Provider
Focus on Servers, Storage, Windows and Vmware
Use PowerShell and PowerCLI daily
Colin Westwater /

2. Why Visual Studio Code?
‘Traditional’ PowerShell ISE no longer developed;
Visual Studio Code is actively developed;
Visual Studio Code is multi-platform;
Works with PowerShell Core;
Better IDE.
MS have declared 5.1 complete and all focus on Core. Thus ISE no longer being updated
Code hosted on Github – anyone can contribute
Core only works with Code
Dark Mode!

3. Installation Download from https://code.visualstudio.com
Windows, Mac and Linux;
Available in User or System Installer;
Portable option available.
Multi-platform.
Recent change to a User Installer – no admin rights needed
Can have a portable .zip option if you want

4. PowerShell Extension Search for PowerShell in Extensions;
Adds Syntax Highlighting, Intellisense, F8 Support, snippets, etc;
Support for PowerShell 3+ and PowerShell Core;
Integrates with the Terminal in Visual Studio Code.
Two ways to install. Go to the Extensions and search for PowerShell or save a .ps1 file (demo)
Demo Terminal

5. Integrated Terminal
Allows you to run PowerShell directly in Visual Studio Code;
You can choose which version of PowerShell to use;
You can also default to 5.1, 6, CMD, WSL, Git Bash, etc;
Use ‘Shell Launcher’ Extension if you want to be able to choose which one dynamically.
Demo Shell Launcher

6. Top Extensions ‘PowerShell’ by Microsoft;
‘Settings Sync’ by Shan Khan;
‘Log File Highlighter’ by Emil Astrom;
‘Markdownlint’ by David Anson;
‘vscode-icons’ by Robert Huertas;
‘Shell Launcher’ by Daniel Imms.
Settings Sync allows all settings and extensions to be synced across installs. Uses GitHub Gists to sync
Log File Highlighter adds colour highlighting to log files
Markdownlint compares your markdown to a set of best practice ’rules’ for markdown standards
vscode-icons adds nice icons to the file types in the Explorer

7. Blog post and slides available at www.vgemba.net
Thank You!
Blog post and slides available at