The experimental tool helps with viewing, running, and debugging apps from within the editor. Credit: Roman Samborskyi / Shutterstock Microsoft is offering a Visual Studio Code extension to help developers use the Project Tye .NET tool for building microservices and distributed applications. Available in a preview form from the Visual Studio Marketplace, the extension assists with viewing, running, and debugging applications from within the Visual Studio Code editor. The extension is positioned as a continuation of the Tye experiment, intended to provide insight into cloud-native tool experiences. With the extension, services are displayed in the Tye explorer interface as soon as the Tye application is running. From the explorer, developers can view logs for services, browse to services with possible endpoints, or attach a debugger to available .NET services. A link is included to navigate to the browser-based Tye dashboard. Various debugging scenarios are supported via the extension, along with the ability to run a Tye application without debugging or debug all or a subset of services. Also, services can be debugged in watch mode, where the debugger will watch for code changes and reattach to the process, enabling continued debugging without restarting the app. Debugging a Tye application requires a Tye-specific task and launch configuration, with the extension helping to scaffold the default task and launch configuration with the Tye: Scaffold Tye Tasks command. Also, the extension enables attaching the debugger to already running project-based services. Using Tye itself does require Docker to be installed. Developers can report issues with Tye by opening an issue at dotnet/tye. Issues with the extension can be reported by clicking on the Report Issue button in the Help and Feedback section or by opening an issue on GitHub. Microsoft .NETSoftware DevelopmentDevelopment Tools