Visual Studio Code for CS50 is a web app at code.cs50.io that adapts GitHub Codespaces for students and teachers. It automates the process of creating a repository inside of CS50's GitHub organization, pushing to it an initial .devcontainer.json, and creating a codespace. Ultimately, it allows students to start programming with just a browser, without needing to install or configure anything locally on their own computer. Within their browser is a full-fledged version of Visual Studio Code, aka VS Code, including a tabbed text editor, terminal window (connected to a Docker container running cs50/codespace), and graphical file explorer.
See code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstarted/userinterface.
See code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstarted/themes.
VS Code supports quite a few settings via which you can customize a codespace:
- User settings, which "apply globally to any instance of VS Code you open" and can be applied to codespaces as well via Settings Sync.
- Remote settings, which are set by CS50 via
.devcontainer.jsonfile in your codespace. - Workspace settings, which can be set by you via VS Code's GUI (or by editing
.vscode/settings.jsonmanually).
Remote settings override User settings. And Workspace settings override Remote settings.
If you use VS Code outside of CS50, you might thus want to store most of your settings in User settings (and enable Settings Sync). And if there are any Remote settings set by CS50 that you would like to override, you can do so via Workspace settings.
Deleting a codespace will delete all files and folders therein. If you are sure you want to delete a codespace:
- Visit code.cs50.io/settings.
- Under Your codespaces, to the right of
main, click ..., select Delete, and click OK.
You can then create a new codespace by logging back into code.cs50.io.
Special thanks to CS50's friends at GitHub and Microsoft for their support of this app!