[Feature request] VSCode extension for Quarto

[jooyoungseo]

Do you have any plans to develop VSCode extension tailored for Quarto? Please correct me if I am wrong, but currently, users have to manually type required commands in terminal within VSCode.

Another idea is to support qmd files via REditorSupport/vscode-R.

[jjallaire]

Yes, we absolutely do plan on on developing a VSCode extension for Quarto.

[jjallaire]

Note that currently you can get a pretty nice workflow in VS Code by executing quarto preview on a qmd or ipynb. The document will be rendered and shown in a web browser, then every time the file is saved it is automatically re-rendered and the browser refreshed. details here: https://quarto.org/docs/tools/vscode.html#workflow

[amichuda]

Hi! This is a really great software and thanks so much for working on it.

A quick way to add some nice rstudio-like functionality to this, and make it possible to run code directly from qmd files would be to push this pull request over the finish line which would allow you to have multiple code lenses in one file and have multiple ways of denoting code blocks for the python interactive window: microsoft/vscode-jupyter#4876

I sadly don't have enough to finish it, but I think it would make a quarto workflow much more streamlined. Please message me if you want to talk further!

[jjallaire]

Thanks! Yes if that got merged it would indeed enable some pretty nice integration.

We are hoping to do more work on VS Code integration soon so will keep an eye on that PR! (don't have time to work on it now unfortunately)

[joshhopkins]

This, together with [[wikilinks]] (Foam, etc), would be incredible.

[gvelasq]

Would a VS Code extension for Quarto use the native VS Code Notebook API to work with .ipynb files, and if so, would Quarto use traditional Jupyter kernels to execute code in R, Python, etc.?

There is ongoing work to integrate R into VS Code notebooks at REditorSupport/vscode-R#394, however it is not clear that there is a plan to adapt IRKernel for this purpose: IRkernel/IRkernel#685

[jjallaire]

Quarto already works pretty well w/ VS Code notebooks: https://quarto.org/docs/get-started/hello/vscode.html

The kernel in this case is whatever the user chooses.

For notebooks, the VS Code extension will focus on render/preview workflow and possibly a custom markdown cell renderer. For qmd files, the VS Code extension will focus on syntax highlighting, completion, etc.

[jjallaire]

We have starting working on our VS Code extension. The current release is here: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=quarto.quarto&ssr=false#overview

@amichuda, we've got Code Lens Run actions working using the jupyter.execSelectionInteractiveCommand (which now allows you to pass a string to execute arbitrary code in the interactive python console).