How to contribute to Visual Studio Code

Do you want to add a new feature on Visual Studio Code, or fix an existing bug? Here’s how to do that!

Let’s see together how to move the first steps on the GitHub Open Source repository of Microsoft Visual Studio Code (vscode) with the goal of submitting a Pull Request with our code! (and getting featured in the next official release notes).

Since the Open Source community is constantly growing, I recorded a video to help newcomers move the first steps. It will provide an overview on:

• Understanding the docs (You better not skip this part)
• Setting up the project
• Build & run
• Automated Testing (Spoiler: coverage is low)
• Using the debugger
• Finding an issue
• Contributing without code

Visual Studio Code is one of those large repositories that at first might seem impossible to understand, but the satisfaction in seeing a feature YOU developed, being used by thousands of developers every day, is huge.

This time I don’t have a full written version for the article as most of the time I will screen share and directly show what I’m talking about, so here it is: