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Visual Studio Code

Packaged Tools

Visual Studio Code uses our Cloud Development Environment Base image, and includes the features highlighted here.

Accessing a Locally Running Application

As Visual Studio Code’s port forwarding functionality does not work in our environment, we have enabled similar functionality using host based routing.

To access an application running locally, it must be running on port 8081, you can then access it by visiting https://${USERNAME}-vscode-tunnel.tools.analytical-platform.service.justice.gov.uk.

This cannot be accessed by anyone other than yourself as it uses the same authentication method as Visual Studio Code.

Known Issues and Limitations

  • Like JupyterLab and RStudio, Visual Studio Code runs on Analytical Platform’s Kubernetes infrastructure, therefore we cannot provide access to Docker.

  • Due to how Analytical Platform automatically scales tooling up and down depending on user activity, session persistence is not available in Visual Studio Code’s extensions, for example GitHub Pull Requests.

  • Connecting to Microsoft Azure is possible, however you will need to change the setting mssql.azureActiveDirectory to DeviceCode, as per this comment

  • We are aware of an issue with Visual Studio Code timing out, while we determine the cause of this, users will need to choose “Reload Window”.

  • Conda’s environments do not persist (fresh deployment or unidling) as it’s directory /opt/conda is not stored on the persistent file system. We are evaluating if we should move this to persistent storage.

This page was last reviewed on 9 October 2024. It needs to be reviewed again on 9 January 2025 by the page owner #analytical-platform-support .