Tag Archives: vscode

development, javascript, microsoft, tech

TypeScript 7 is done

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Principal product manager Daniel Rosenwasser reports that TypeScript 7 is now generally available – a big release, since this is the first to have the native port of the TypeScript compiler built in Go. Rosenwasser claims “speedups between 8x and 12x on full builds.”

There is a snag. Although TypeScript 7 is production-ready, it has no API; that will not come until TypeScript 7.1. It may come as a surprise to you that TypeScript has an API; it is not something highlighted in the TypeScript docs. You will find it covered in the official Wiki where there is an article on using the compiler API dated October 2023 and advising that “this is not yet a stable API.”

Despite the compiler API being somewhat obscure, Rosenwasser says this means that “workflows that use Vue, MDX, Astro, Svelte, and others will likely not yet be able to leverage TypeScript 7. Similarly, specialized type-checking within templates like Angular will also likely not use TypeScript 7.” That is a significant blocker to adoption.

The dedicated TypeScript 7/0 extension for Visual Studio Cdde

Users of Visual Studio Code should install the dedicated TypeScript 7.0 extension which already has enthusiastic reviews. “Saves us lots of time in CI/CD. The difference in speed is huge!” said one.

Personally I now use TypeScript rather than JavaScript almost exclusively, when targeting browser scripting, and will endeavour to switch to 7.0 immediately. I would much rather have the compiler find errors, than have them turn up in production.

software development, tech

Installing Ubuntu 22.04 on Apple M1 with UTM

I  started with Arch Linux for Linux development  on  M1, which works, but succumbed to Ubuntu just because it is so widely used and therefore easier to find help. It is also supported by VS Code for remote development, as I am aiming for something similar to a WSL setup on Windows and using VS Code on the host side. I had problems installing 22.04 though;  the install completed but trying to boot resulted in:

EFI stub: booting Linux Kernel

EFI stub: Using DTB from configuration table

EFI stub: Exiting boot services

and there it would stay.

The fix I found was to update QEMU:

sudo port selfupdate

sudo port install qemu

after which Ubuntu started without issue (no need to reinstall).

Following this I was able to install and use the Remote – SSH extension in VS Code which worked first time.

Small points to note:

  • I accepted the option in Ubuntu to install the OpenSSH server during installation
  • In UTM I changed the networking for the VM to Emulated VLAN rather than Shared Network, in order to use port forwarding. I forwarded both the SSH port 22 and also the HTTP port 80, to different ports on the Mac, so that I can test web applications running on Ubuntu.

Thanks also to Liz Rice for her post here.