Visual Studio Code uses JSON files for configuration. There isn't much to configure, as most sensible options for Python development are enabled by default. This is done from (you guessed) the command palette: So to be on the safe side, I got used to selecting the interpreter when I open the IDE for the first time on a project. Normally the interpreter from the virtual environment will be picked up automatically, but I've found that this does not always work. There is an extra step that isn't always necessary, which is to select the Python interpreter to use. Note the dot, given as an argument, so that a new project is created on the current directory. Then, I can start Visual Studio Code from the root directory of my project with this simple command: code. To start a new project, what I find the most convenient is to create my project in the command line however I like, including a virtual environment with my preferred python version. On Windows you will need to download an executable and install it somewhere on your path.

On the Mac, you can install it with homebrew ( brew install ctags), on Ubuntu Linux with apt-get ( sudo apt-get install exuberant-ctags). The Python extension requires that you install the exuberant ctags tool, which helps with the symbol extraction from source code files.

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