I just upgraded my copy of Visual Studio, added the Python Development Workload to it via the VS Installer, and finally (and very happily) uninstalled the whole Visual Studio Preview thingie. Alleluja!

In case you are wondering what this is all about, well you should know that Python in Visual Studio is very powerful. The Release Notes provide a quick overview:

We have enhanced the Python development workload in Visual Studio to maximize your productivity in Python. We offer improved IntelliSense, web development projects, Git, and VSTS integration to save you time and effort on everyday tasks. Use world class debugging (local, remote, cross-platform, and Python/native) and profiling tools to improve the quality and performance of your Python code.

You can also check out my Python on Windows Like a Boss talk (although I guess it will kind of suck without the live demo), or jump over to the official Python information page.

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So let us take the Eve.NET project as an example. It makes a good candidate because it is an open source project, so you can go and have a look at the source code before and after the switch from PCL to NetStandard.

The first step was, of course, opening the project in Visual Studio 2017. If you are on an older VS version, you should upgrade. For many valid reasons indeed, among them the fact that Visual Studio 2017 comes with a built-in option to switch a project to NetStandard.

As you can see, before the upgrade Eve.NET was a Profile259 PCL project. As metioned, Visual Studio offers the option to switch to the .NET Platform Standard. By clicking the link, you get a fair warning that you might not be able to use the same APIs when targeting NetStandard. That makes sense because, as you probably know already, NetStandard is an API specification while a PCL essentially is the intersection (or lowest common denominator) of the APIs available on target platforms. PCL compatibility has never been the design goal of NetStandard.

Generally speaking, NetStandard offers a wider range of APIs compared to most PCL profiles and, most importantly, is planned to go through a cycle of incremental upgrades of the API specification, each one denoted by a version number. We already went from 1.0 to 1.6, with 2.0 currently being developed. NetStandard 2 will be a significant milestone, just give a look at the impressive diff between 1.6 and 2.0. A lot of open source projects are eagerly waiting on NetStandard 2 release (Q3 2017).

Upon confirming the switch, you might get the following show-stopper (I did):

This dialog will pop up if your project never has opted-in for NuGet 3.0. If this is the case, you have to go back, uninstall all NuGet packages, then attempt the switch again. When the migration is complete, you will have to re-install the packages, provided that they are compatible with NetStandard. In Eve.NET case the only dependency is Json.NET, which supports NetStandard 1.3, which also means that Eve cannot support previous NetStandard versions.

Now, if you give a look at the installed packages, you will find that you have a couple of new entries: NETStandard.Library, which is pretty self-explanatory, and Microsoft.NETCore.Portable.Compatibility. This one will only appear when you convert from a PCL: a brand new NetStandard project will not take a dependency on it. If you are not using any legacy code, like NET 4.0-only, or Silverlight, you should be able to drop this dependency safely (I did with no consequences).

The project is now NetStandard and ready to be used on all the platforms supporting your chosen version: NETCore, Windows, Xamarin, UWP, you name it.

However, you will soon notice that the project has gained a project.json file. It is ok, it works just fine, but it is obsolete: with Visual Studio 2017 project.json was abandoned for a new, streamlined and pretty darn powerful, .csproj project file. In the next article, I will show you how to move your project forward by dropping project.json and embracing the new project type (and other niceties, like dropping the .nuspec file in the process).

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As expected, the official release is actually coming out with no support for Python. It will come in a few months. Bummer. In the meanwhile however you can go and grab the (also newly released) Visual Studio Preview. This new kid on the block has the ability to be installed and used side-by-side with the official release and will be used - you guessed it - as an early preview of what’s coming next for Visual Studio.

Two key things to note here:

• Everything that is in Visual Studio 2017 is also in Visual Studio Preview;
• They are two separate installations with separate workloads and settings.

Now you might be thinking that two installs are overkill, and I concur. Because Preview includes all the official features, you might also think that you can probably get away with only installing Visual Studio Preview. That would work, but here is the catch: Visual Studio Preview has no support for paid product offerings. So if you are a Professional or Enterprise user well, you are out of luck.

This is not ideal. Python pulled out of RC3 was understandable, although unsettling. Not included with the official release? Not pretty. For most people, I suspect, the gimmicks required to get Python to work with Visual Studio 2017 are unbearable. Personally, I will fallback to other solutions and wait until Python Workload gets merged back with the official offering.

I am still convinced that in the long run Visual Studio with its Python Workload will become the best option to do Python on Windows (Visual Studio Code being the second best candidate). I mean, look at this beauty:

Combined with the VsVim extension it makes Python coding on Windows almost as great as Vim+bash I’ve been using so far, but within Visual Studio which I use for all my other coding (don’t get me started on C# in Vim. That is material for another post maybe.) I am also totally sympathetic with the dev team. I have been in this business for longer than I care to admit and I do know these things happen. But still, there is no dobut that this unfortunate incident marks a serious setback.

In less than one month I will be givin a talk at PyCon Italy. It is titled Python on Windows Like a Boss and the heart of it was of course going be the Python Workload for Visual Studio 2017. With this turn of events I will probably end up going on stage with the previous version of the tool, and Visual Studio 2015.

Or I will bite the bullet and install 35 gigs of mostly duplicated software.

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I found out the hard way this morning as I wanted to install VS 2017 RC3 on my development machine and, to my surprise, I could not find Python Development anywhere on the workloads window (which itself is a huge improvement over the VS 2015 install experience, by the way). Easy, I thought, they moved it to some secondary “optional workloads” tab, but a quick scan did not reveal any of that.

Concerned now, I turned to the Oracle of All Things only to find that the Python Workload has been pulled off the Visual Studio 2017 RC3 (January 2017). It was actually reported in the release notes:

Removed the Data Science and Python Development workloads as some of the components weren’t meeting the release requirements, such as translation to non-English languages. They will be available soon as separate downloads.

When I glanced over them I (and probably you too) did not notice this little paragraph. But wait, it’s even worse than you would expect:

Upgrading to current version will remove any previously installed Python and Data Science workloads/components.

That’s right. If you upgrade to RC3 you win a wipe out of your Python environment. Further research revelead an open ticket on GitHub. Apparently they are working on a way to install the Python and Data Science workloads on top of an existing VS 2017 install, but I would not hold my breath on it:

Thanks everyone for the support and understanding. It’s still not clear to us how we’re going to be releasing Python support, but the plan is definitely to have something when VS 2017 releases next month.

Since the official VS 2017 release is planned early next month it is very likely that we will just have to wait until then. In the meantime, you better have a VS 2015 sitting side by side with your brand new, mutilated, Visual Studio 2017. Or you switch to Visual Studio Code, which offers fantastic support for Python.

Or you fallback to good ole trusted Vim, like I did.

UPDATE (Feb 22, 2017). There’s now an official post up at the Microsoft Python Engineering blog, by Steve Dower. Looks like using Python with Visual Studio 2017 will initially require a separate “preview” build of VS itself. Only months later Python support will be merged to the official bundle.

UPDATE (Mar 8, 2017). I posted a follow-up article, as VS2017 has finally been released.

Join the newsletter to get an email alert when a new post surfaces on this site. If you want to get in touch, I am @nicolaiarocci on twitter.

Python Tools per Visual Studio è un plugin gratuito e open source che trasforma Visual Studio in una IDE per Python. Supporta CPython, IronPython, Intellisense, Debugging, Profiling, Editing, Browsing, REPL Multipli, IPython, Django e Cloud Computing con librerie client per Windows, Linux e OS X (Azure).

La versione 1.5, rilasciata oggi, aggiunge supporto per Django, Azure, REPL debugging, Visual Studio 2012 e altro.

Per informazioni su Python Tools per Visual Studio date una occhiata a Programmare in Python con Visual Studio 2010 e Python Studio per Visual Studio 1.0.

Oltre 200 i bug risolti e notevoli sono le novità introdotte, come per esempio il supporto per il refactoring. Consultate le release notes conoscere tutte le novità. Se volete saperne di più su questo interessante progetto vi invito a leggere Programmare in Python con Visual Studio 2010,  la recensione che ho scritto in occasione del lancio.

Aggiornamento del 2.8.2011: siamo arrivati alla RC2

Il progetto è stato presentato al PyCon 2011 dal Microsoft Technical Computing Group ed è davvero ben fatto. Per tutti gli approfondimenti vi rimando al mio articolo Programmare in Python con Visual Studio 2010.

Questa nuova release porta in dote una serie di bug fix che rendono più stabile il progetto e nessuna nuova feature. A questo punto la Release Candidate 1, programmata inizialmente per il mese di maggio, subirà probabilmente un leggero slittamento. Immagino che dovremo aspettare almeno il prossimo mese.