VSCode Configuration

VSCode has many configuration options and an active plugin ecosystem. Editor configuration (as well as the editor itself) is a user choice and we respect this. This guide thus a a collection of useful snippets, extensions, and debug launch configurations, which we think are worth sharing with the team.

Extensions

A plethora of extensions are available for VSCode. Most of them target streamlining workflows, which can be a huge time-saver. We found the following to be useful (in no particular order)

• Python (language support including pylance & debugger) / Black Formatter
• Modern Fortran (without the fortls engine or else the extension dies trying to figure out GEOS)
• H5Web for netcdf inline viewing
• DaCe SDFG Editor (in case you work with DaCe graphs)
• your standard set of git extensions
• GitLens (in-code git blame)
• Git Graph (clean git graphs)
• Live Share (remote pair-programming)
• Draw.io Integration (draw & share graphs directly from within VSCode - we've seen scaling errors when mixed with graphs created from the website)
• Mermaid support for Markdown preview

Format on save

While pre-commit is the source of truth, having format on save support in the editor can be a huge time-saver. To enable format on save

1. Install the "Black Formatter" extension (see above)
2. Configure "Black Formatter" as the default formatter for python files and enable format on save. In .vscode/settings.json add

{
    "[python]": {
        "editor.defaultFormatter": "ms-python.black-formatter",
        "editor.formatOnSave": true
    },
}

Run pytests in parallel

pytest is the de-facto standard for testing in the python stack. VSCode has out-of-the-box support for pytest. To speed up test runs, you can run tests in parallel. --numprocesses=auto will pick a sensible default. Read more here.

{
    "python.testing.pytestEnabled": true,
    "python.testing.pytestArgs": [
        "--numprocesses=auto",
        "tests"
    ],
    "python.testing.unittestEnabled": false,
}

Debugging

In VSCode, debugging tasks can be configured with so called “launch configurations”, that live in launch.json files. Sharing these here will help the team debug faster.

Translate tests

Warning

Blindly copy/pasting the snippet below will not work because of hard-coded paths in the config. We should clean this up and/or explain them in the snippet.

{
    "name": "Translate - pyMoist",
    "type": "debugpy",
    "request": "launch",
    "module": "pytest",
    "args": [
        "-s",
        "-v",
        "-x",
        "--data_path=/home/mad/work/fp/geos/src/Components/@GEOSgcm_GridComp/GEOSagcm_GridComp/GEOSphysics_GridComp/GEOSmoist_GridComp/pyMoist/test_data/geos_11.5.2/moist",
        "--grid=default",
        "--backend=numpy",
        "--which_modules=evap_subl_pdf",
        "/home/mad/work/fp/geos/src/Components/@GEOSgcm_GridComp/GEOSagcm_GridComp/GEOSphysics_GridComp/GEOSmoist_GridComp/pyMoist/tests"
    ],
    "env": {
        "PACE_TEST_N_THRESHOLD_SAMPLES": "0",
        "PACE_FLOAT_PRECISION": "32"
    }
}