Introduction

As a developer, engineer, analyst, or tester, Visual Studio Code is a great tool to use to help you navigate the development and CI/CD landscape. The following extensions can be installed that will help you get connected to the various tools used in the DevOps Dojo.

Microsoft Certified Extensions

It is important to use extensions that are widely used. Since they are often crowd-sourced and then certified, using certified and verified extensions will be beneficial and reduce issues found with the extensions. Always look for the Certified button and also the number of installs. The higher, the better.

  • .NET Install Tool for Extension Authors

  • ARM Template Viewer

  • Azure Account - used to authenticate to Azure

  • Azure App Service

  • Azure Application Insights

  • Azure CLI Tools

  • Azure Functions

  • Azure Logic Apps (Consumption)

  • Azure Policy

  • Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Tools

  • Azure Resources

  • Azure Terraform

  • Cloud Code - Google development

  • Docker

  • ESLint

  • Jupyter

  • Kubernetes

  • npm

  • npm Intellisense

  • Pylance

  • Python

  • PIP

  • Qiskit

  • Qiskit Aer

  • Qiskit Aqua

  • Qiskit Chemistry

  • Qiskit Ignis

  • Qiskit Nature

  • Qiskit Optimization

  • Qiskit Terra

  • Cirq

  • Azure Quantum

  • Openfermion

  • Openfermion-Cirq

  • Openfermion-Psi4

  • Openfermion-PySCF

  • Openfermion-Qiskit

  • Openfermion-Tensorflow

  • Openfermion-Interactions

  • Remote Containers

  • Visual Studio IntelliCode

  • YAML

Hashicorp

If you are developing YAML files for the CI/CD pipelines, you will want the following extensions.

  • HashiCorp Terraform

Git

GitHub, Git Workflow, etc. are used in this space. Since you will be committing code that needs to be tracked and will be evaluated for quality, please install the following extensions to activate your Git account and also the workflow.

  • Git Graph

  • Git History

  • GitHub Pull Requestes and Issues - used to authenticate

  • GitLens-Git supercharged

The Git process is simple.

  1. Clone the repository you want to work in. This will be empty after you create the subscription.

  2. Create a branch from main. Main is where the stable code lives.

  3. Write code, add files, add folders and structure to your repo.

  4. Commit your code.

  5. Pull latest from origin / main

  6. Push to origin / your branch

  7. This will create a merge request. Assign the merge request to your peer, attach the merge request to a work item whether in ADO or elsewhere.

  8. They review the merge request and either ask for changes or approve it.

  9. If approved, your changes will merge with origin / main and become stable code.

  10. If a pipeline is connected, which it likely is, the pipeline runs and deploys the code to the cloud.

Behavior Driven Development

Behavior Driven Development is a process where you write feature scenarios first, then write tests to pass or fail those scenarios, then write code to pass or fail the tests.

The behavior is broken down via the process of using Gherkin syntax. The syntax follows a simple recipe.

  1. Given - the starting condition of the feature being developed. E.g. Given I am deploying a web app service

  2. When - the test condition. This means that when the test runs, this is what you are trying to do. E.g. When I run the CICD pipeline

  3. Then - the result of the test condition. This means that after the test runs this is the result. The result can have multiple paths. E.g. Then the webapp service is deployed to Azure.

It also uses keywords like And and But.

You will install these extensions to make sure you can write feature files.

  • Cucumber(Gherkin) Full Support

  • Gherkin Indent

  • Snippets and Syntax Highlight for Gherkin

  • Specflow Tools

Optional Extensions

  • Material Icon Theme - changes the icons to be context driven. Very useful when recognizing different types of files in a large solution

  • Swagger Viewer - used to create and view Swagger files

  • Tools for Apache Kafka - used to manage Kafka queues and files

  • vscode-odata - Odata support for VS Code

  • vscode-pdf - display PDFs in VS Code

  • Markdown PDF - used to convert markdown to PDF

Added Tools

  • Azure Data Studio - used to connect to SQL Server and other databases

  • Azure Storage Explorer - used to connect to Azure storage accounts