Using Visual Studio Code with Ruby on Rails

Microsoft recently released Visual Studio Code for Windows, Linux and Mac.

This is a guide on how to get setup with a similar configuration to sublime/atom while having features like autocomplete, code linting with rubocop and syntax highlighting.

Visual Studios strong points:

• Handles large files very well
• Insanely fast IntelliSense
• Debug code right from the editor with break points, call stacks, and an interactive console.
• Git initegration
• Extensible and customizable
• Supports many different languages
• Preview or jump to definitions

Let’s start by installing some extensions:

• ‘erb’, Syntax Highlighting for ERB files
• ‘Ruby Language Colorization’, Adds support for Ruby colorization
• ‘ruby-linter’, An extension to use built in ruby linting
• ‘ruby’, Provides ruby language and debugging support
• ‘vscode-icons’, Adds pretty icons to your sidebar to help identify file types

Add the following into your User Settings file:

{
    "editor.tabSize": 2, // Set tab size to 2, defaults to 4
    "editor.rulers": [80], // Try to keep lines under 80
    "editor.fontSize": 12,
    "files.trimTrailingWhitespace": true,
    "telemetry.enableCrashReporter": false,
    "explorer.workingFiles.dynamicHeight": false,
    "explorer.workingFiles.maxVisible": 3,
    "ruby.lint": {
        "reek": true,
        "rubocop": true,
        "ruby": true,
        "fasterer": true,
        "debride": true,
        "ruby-lint": true
    }
}

Now we need to install some gems into your default ruby, I use rbenv with rbenv global set to 2.3.1.

sudo gem install rubocop

sudo gem install ruby-debug-ide

sudo gem install debase

Now restart Visual Studio Code it should hopefully look like the below screenshots:

Go Further:

If your feeling brave you can write your own extensions in JavaScript or TypeScript read more about that here - Extending Visual Studio Code.