Setting up Visual Studio Code for C# Development

Installing Visual Studio Code is great when you need to open your projects and work on them without requiring the full blown Visual Studio Enterprise.  Now most of the time I prefer to use the full Visual Studio but other times I just need to open a few projects to do some work and don't have access to my development machine.  It is nice to be able to install Visual Studio Code and quickly set up and make a few changes and check them into source control.

A challenge I have often heard is that when working with Visual Studio Code you have to rely on Open Folder. This is not true. Set up properly you can use .sln files, you just have to know how to set that up. Thanks Geo J Thachankary for the article on how to create a .NET Core development environment using Visual Studio Code. This is where I learned this. Look at his steps and he describes this in more details.

Step 1: Install a couple Visual Studio Code Extensions

• This can be done by clicking on the View and Extensions menu.
• Once it opens type in C#. Install the C# extension published by Microsoft. It should appear at the top.
• Next install the Solution Explorar by searching for vscode-solution. This one is published by Fernando Escolar.