VS Code in the Visual Studio Marketplace

Unlike Visual Studio 2019, VS Code always shows extensions from the Visual Studio Marketplace. Searching for extensions is much like using the Online window or Gallery tab in Visual Studio 2019. Type your search criteria in the search box, select an extension to view the details, and if you like it click Install.

Creating an extension

What happens when you search and search but you still can't find the extension you want? Well, we are developers, after all, so let's just write our own! Everything we need to create an extension is available in a couple of npm packages all ready for us.

Generating a basic extension

Let's create an extension that inserts a licensing header at the top of an open document, as follows:

1. To get started, we will need to install the yo and generator_code npm packages. The yo package is a code scaffolder, which creates a basic project for us. The generator_code package contains the templates...