We’re pleased to announce the release of Node.js Tools for Visual Studio 1.0 Beta 2.

Node.js Tools for Visual Studio (NTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports developing applications for Node.js written in JavaScript. NTVS supports a broad range of features including editing, IntelliSense, debugging including edit and continue and cross platform debugging, profiling, NPM integration, TypeScript, and an integrated REPL window. NTVS also makes it easy to quickly create web sites and deploy them to Microsoft Azure Web Sites or Cloud Services.

NTVS 1.0 Beta 2 is available for:

• Visual Studio 2013 Express for Web (requires Update 2)
• Visual Studio 2013 Pro or higher (requires Update 2)
• Visual Studio 2012 Pro or higher (requires Update 4)

Changes since 1.0 Beta

New analysis/IntelliSense engine

This is one of the most significant changes since beta and we are interested in hearing all of your feedback. The new analysis engine should do a better job of providing completions in larger projects and should be faster to provide those completions. The new analysis engine also brings with it new features including find all references, goto definition and IntelliSense in the REPL window. We’ve also lost some features such as brace completion and outlining but those are planned to reappear in Beta 3.

Because this is a huge change we are eagerly awaiting your feedback – both positive and negative. If you run into issues with IntelliSense: that could include large memory usage or a spike in CPU usage on project load. The analysis is cached with your project so subsequent project loads should not have the same CPU impact. You can change the aggressiveness of it or disable it completely in Tools->Options->Text Editor->Node.js->IntelliSense. We’ll use this feedback to drive improvements into our Beta 3 release.

Improved NPM UI

The NPM management UI has been significantly updated to be easier to use. We’ve also added integrated support for invoking NPM inside of the REPL window with a new .npm command.

Mocha Unit Test Support

Unit test support has been expanded to add support for unit tests written using Mocha. It’s also now possible to add support for your own unit test frameworks by writing a single Node module which finds and runs the tests.

Numerous bug fixes

All across the product numerous issues have been fixed – including code formatting which was re-written for improved performance, various fixes in the debugger, improvements to project load time and more. We’d like to thank all of the people who have reported issues fixed in this release including andydots, crlf0710, Deandob, delfinof, dtretyakov, EdvinV, f0xza, flyfj, gtk2k, JamesBlunt, johnny_k, jtwillig, kgolding, kubal5003, leonzhuang, magicdawn, monkeybrother, nabog, pcttechnical, rdd3, ronba, Roquqkie, ryancrawcour, SebastienSAIGO, shacal, vernerrs.

Help Make NTVS Better

NTVS is an open source project and we’re always willing to take high quality contributions. If you’d like to contribute please check out our issue tracker for outstanding bugs and features which can be implemented. You can also help make NTVS better by reporting issues or helping out your fellow users on our forums. We’d like to thank the users who have contributed to this release by submitting pull requests including BartRead, dtretyakov and WangYugang.