Introduction
In this article, I am going to present my top 5 free extensions for Visual Studio Code to you. They offer a jump start for your development progress.
VS Code is a very good code editor, not only in my opinion (see StackOverflow developer survey 2021). But today’s tools can be enhanced with extensions to make them perfect for your specific tasks. Here are the extensions that I use as a Flutter developer.
Todo Tree
Todo Tree collects all comments starting with specific tags like bug, hack, fixme, or todo. They are organized into a custom view where they are grouped by folders and classes. It helps to keep track of code parts that need enhancements.
The tags to look for can be changed. The extension can also hook into the status bar and show the current finding count for the current file, for example.Many settings cann be customized.
GistPad
A useful extension, especially for writers. If you regularly use GitHub Gists to share code, GistPad is a must-have extension. You can connect it with your GitHub account and create, edit, delete, or share gists from the VS Code UI.
Coverage Gutters
Coverage Gutters adds visual markers on code lines that have been covered by unit tests. It uses collected coverage information, e.g. from a lcov.info file. With this extension, you can spot untested code parts very easily.
Flutter Coverage
Flutter Coverage adds a panel to the test tab in VS Code to show the covered lines per class in percent. It helps you find classes that need more testing. The thresholds are customizable.
Awesome Flutter Snippets
Awesome Flutter Snippets reduces typing by adding shortcuts to create boilerplate code. When entering these shortcuts, they get replaced with the full-blown implementation code. It’s very useful when you have a lot of widgets like ListViews or GridViews.
Conclusion
These are my must-have extensions when developing Flutter applications. Did I miss a good one? What are your favorite extensions? Tell me in the comments!