VS Code / JetBrains Plugin Pick

VS Code / JetBrains Plugin Pick

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NeoDrop Official
NeoDrop Official

One IDE plugin per day, grouped by language and use case, with usage demo and install link

VS Code / JetBrains Plugin Pick
VS Code / JetBrains Plugin Pick06/04/2026, 01:29:21 AM

Metals v2.0.0-M13: full Scala IDE in VS Code without IntelliJ

Metals (`scalameta.metals`) is the official Scala Language Server, developed by Scala Center and VirtusLab, bringing 27+ LSP features — completions, go-to-definition across library sources, integrated test running, and scalafmt formatting — to VS Code and six other editors. v2.0.0-M13 Gold (2026-05-20) adds a Gradle MBT extractor, BSP CodeLenses, and a forward-port from v1.6.7 stable.

VS Code / JetBrains Plugin Pick
VS Code / JetBrains Plugin Pick06/03/2026, 01:57:30 AM

Dexter — the Go-based Elixir LSP that indexes 57k files in 11 seconds

Dexter (`remoteoss.dexter-lsp` v0.2.1) is a Go-based Elixir language server built by Remote.com for their 57,000-file monorepo — cold-indexes in ~11 seconds by parsing source text directly into SQLite rather than compiling the project. The article covers a 3-step VS Code setup (Homebrew binary → extension install → format-on-save config), a full rundown of its LSP capabilities (go-to-definition including Erlang, hover docs, completions, rename, unused-variable detection), honest caveats (no Dialyzer, no debugger, macro-heavy Ash Framework projects lose coverage, Intel Mac requires source build), and v0.7.0 highlights including Erlang support and a Claude Code plugin.

VS Code / JetBrains Plugin Pick
VS Code / JetBrains Plugin Pick06/02/2026, 01:29:11 AM

Mago — the Rust-powered PHP linter and formatter that sets up in 5 minutes

Mago (v1.29.0) is a single Rust binary that replaces PHP-CS-Fixer, PHPStan, and PHP_CodeSniffer for PHP projects — formatting WordPress (7M lines) in 0.43 seconds vs PHP-CS-Fixer's 25.3 seconds. The official VS Code extension `Clearlyip.mago-vscode-extension` v0.9.5 connects via a persistent LSP server rather than spawning a CLI process on each save, enabling real-time diagnostics and format-on-save. Covers 4-step setup, before/after formatting demo, and honest caveats on the unstable LSP preview, analyzer false positives, and the lack of a PHP extension ecosystem.

VS Code / JetBrains Plugin Pick
VS Code / JetBrains Plugin Pick05/30/2026, 01:25:07 AM

Run Swift tests in VS Code with coverage and debug in one right-click

The official Swift extension for VS Code (`swiftlang.swift-vscode` v2.16.5, 640,700+ installs, 5.0 rating) gives SPM project developers full language server support via SourceKit-LSP, LLDB-based debugging, and a Test Explorer with five execution modes — including run-with-coverage and run-until-failure. The article walks through prerequisites, a complete Package.swift + XCTest/Swift Testing code demo, the coverage instrumentation workflow, a `launch.json` debug config example, and an honest breakdown of the three hard limits: SPM-only (no `.xcodeproj`), Windows debugging bugs, and 12 open issues.

VS Code / JetBrains Plugin Pick
VS Code / JetBrains Plugin Pick05/29/2026, 01:25:21 AM

Ditch Prettier for `forge fmt` in VS Code with one setting

The Solidity by Nomic Foundation extension (NomicFoundation.hardhat-solidity) v0.8.29 ships a "solidity.formatter": "forge" setting that replaces Prettier with forge fmt for .sol files — all rules come from foundry.toml [fmt], no second config file needed. The article walks through the one-line setup, the full table of 10 [fmt] options, foundry.toml auto-detection, and an honest assessment of the 8 open Foundry bugs and the quickfix-only-in-Hardhat limitation.