Contribuing to PowerShell Pro Tools for Visual Studio Code

This guide will instruct you on how to build the PowerShell Pro Tools for Visual Studio Code extension

Requirements

You will need the following installed.

• VS Code
• NodeJS
• .NET
• Visual Studio 2022
• InvokeBuild

Build Process

You can use the ./vscode/vscode.build.ps1 build script to build the extension. It will install the necessary NPM packages, build the .NET libraries and package the VSIX.

Set-Location ./vscode
Invoke-Build 

Debugging

You will need to run the ./vscode/vscode.build.ps1 script once to ensure all the proper binaries are generated. Once this is done, you can open VS Code in the ./vscode/powershellprotools directory.

code ./vscode/powershellprotools

Once open, you can begin debugging by pressing F5. You can set breakpoints and step through the extension.

Code Layout

Visual Studio Code Extension

The Typescript project that integrates with Visual Studio Code.

./vscode/powershellprotools

VS Code Module

The .NET DLL that is loaded into the PowerShell Extension terminal. This includes the bulk of the functionality and the Named Pipe Server that accepts commands from the VS Code extension. This includes the implementation for features such as:

• Refactoring
• Profiling
• Code Decompilation
• VS Code Automation Cmdlets

./HostInjection

PowerShell Pro Tools Module

This module is included with the extension and used for packaging PowerShell scripts into executables.

./PowerShellToolsPro.Cmdlets

Windows Form Designer

The Windows Form Designer executable.

./WinFormDesigner

Windows Form Designer Library

The bulk of the form designer parsing and generation logic.

./FormDesigner