#VSCode

I know that people who are completely new to VS Code, Git, Docker, FHIR, and other tools can sometimes struggle with setting up the environment. So I decided to write an article that walks through the entire setup process step by step to make it easier to get started.

I’d really appreciate it if you could leave a comment at the end - let me know if the instructions were clear, if anything was missing, or if there’s anything else you'd find helpful.

The setup includes:

✅ VS Code – Code editor
✅ Git – Version control system
✅ Docker – Runs an instance of IRIS for Health Community
✅ VS Code REST Client Extension – For running FHIR API queries
✅ Python – For writing FHIR-based scripts
✅ Jupyter Notebooks – For AI and FHIR assignments

Before you begin: Ensure you have administrator privileges on your system.

In addition to reading the guide, you can also follow the steps in the videos:

For Windows

To VSCode experts - see the screenshot. When right-click on a method with intentions to proceed to the source code:

I am always confused about what to choose: declaration or definition. What is the difference?

I was using VSCode to edit a DTL because it seemed easier to copy/paste code from parts of the DTL I was editing. I tried to add <sql> tag and code to call a SELECT statement, but when I compiled I got the following error...

ERROR <Ens>ErrInvalidDTL: Invalid DTL

  > ERROR #5490: Error running generator for method 'GetSourceDocType:osuwmc.Epic.MFN.DTL.EpicMFN949002Normalization'

ERROR: Ens.DataTransformDTL.cls(GetSourceDocType) of generated code compiling subclass 'osuwmc.Epic.MFN.DTL.EpicMFN949002Normalization'

The VS Code extension development team is looking for beta testers to provide feedback on a proposed overhaul of the client-side editing workflow. The full list of changes can be found in the GitHub pull request description. Here are the highlights:

Have you ever been editing files in VS Code, but needed to check a global value or run a few ObjectScript commands? Now you can, with no setup required! If you have vscode-objectscript extension version 2.10.0 or later and are connected to InterSystems IRIS 2023.2 or later, you can now open a terminal connection to your server, regardless of where it's located.

There are three ways to open this new terminal:

As you may know, the so-called Private Web Server that came with every IRIS installation has been eliminated, making an external web server necessary.

For Docker deployments, it's most common to use the webgateway image (available here) along with the IRIS image to seamlessly access the management portal. This image can be configured to access via HTTPS without any issues by configuring the certificates.

Problem 1: Unable to verify the first certificate

Visual Studio Code releases new updates every month with new features and bug fixes, and the February 2025 release is now available.

There have been enhancements to GitHub Copilot with predictive editing, autonomous task completion, smarter code search, improved terminal and notebook support, and UI and workflow refinements.

If you need help migrating from InterSystems Studio to VS Code, or want to advance your knowledge of VS Code, take a look at the training courses George James Software offers > georgejames.com/vscode-training/

Highlights from version 1.98:

The compile step in VS Code when using the InterSystems VS Code extensions appears to modify line endings in our class files when newly pulled from remote repo.

What steps can we take to stop this happening? / What settings can we modify?

We are doing local development with client side source control using git (BitBucket Cloud repository). We were previously using GitLab (locally hosted) and didn't have this issue. Developers are all on Windows machines, as are all the Ensemble instances. We believe we have autocrlf = true in all our local git configurations.

Steps to reproduce:

ISCLOGs are a useful debugging tool provided with IRIS that can help you troubleshoot many different issues. For more information about creating these logs, please see the following IRIS documentation: "Logging".

This log is written to the ^ISCLOG global stored in the %SYS namespace. Each global node is a separate event, with additional information sometimes logged to the subnode.

Hi - Recently I have been investigating an annoying situation whilst editing ObjectScript classes or routines in VSCode.

What was happening to me was, as I was typing in lines of code into my class (for example, adding a new Method, or changing the Class signature, or a block of code),  this would quickly get syntax checked, re-formatted, and compiled - inevitably, (since I would be mid-way through my typing), this would generate compilation errors.

Hi Community,

Watch this short exercise in writing basic code snippets in InterSystems ObjectScript using Copilot in VSCode and the GPT-4.0 engine. This screencast covers "Hello, World," global manipulation, class creation, and building a simple REST API application.

>> Coding InterSystems ObjectScript with Copilot <<

🗣 Presenter: @Evgeny Shvarov, Senior Manager of Developer and Startup Programs, InterSystems

📌 The related code can be found here: objectscript-copilot-demo.

Hi all!  

In this article I would like to review those VS Code extensions which I use myself to work with InterSystems and which make my work much more convenient. I am sure this article will be useful for those who are just starting their journey to learn InterSystems technologies. However, I also hope that this article could be useful for experienced developers with many years of experience and open up new possibilities for them when using VS Code for development.

When debugging a routine in vscode which requires input to a READ, there doesn't appear to be any way to enter the input.  If the routine is running in a terminal with vscode attached then input can be done there, but can it be done with no attached process?

Hello All,

 I'm new to InterSystems, just wanted to check if we can configure the Visual Studio code to use it as Studio for Intersystems development. I tried following the instructions in few posts but nothing worked. Please  guide me to setup this

Just curious what the process is for debugging either a .py file that is uploaded to a specific namespace/location or a python classmethod defined in a .cls file.

My method can be run via the "Debug" breadcrumb but it doesnt hit breakpoints it just runs without a debugger. Also objectscript methods debug correctly

Visual Studio Code releases new updates every month with new features and bug fixes, and the January 2025 release is now available. 

Overview

After having some discussions at Global Summit and using a lot of package managers in my day to day development (npm,nuget,Chocolatey, etc) in addition to recently using the InterSystems Package Manager for some CICD process I'm building using Intersystems IRIS and IRIS 4 Health, I wanted an easy and integrated way to search/view/install packages related to the Intersystems tech stack.

I recently built a VSCode extension for IPM repositories that I will be open sourcing and publishing to the marketplace but wanted create this post to get some feedback from the community.

First, let me wish the developer community a Happy New Year! We hope to bring you many good things this year, and today I'd like to introduce the latest version of the Intersystems Language Server extension to VS Code. Most Language Server improvements are experienced via the ObjectScript extension UI, so you many not be aware of the many improvements in areas like Intellisense and hover overs that were released throughout 2024. Please take a quick read over the Language Server's CHANGELOG and find out what you missed. Most recently, version 2.7.0 brings support for the Windows ARM platform,

Hi.
This is my first post on this forum; I've tried to open an issue on the official repo , but it seems inactive from more than a year, so I can't receive an answer from there.
I would like to know if someone use that extension and know how to use it when working server-side on an IRIS server.
I have no problem when coding on a file saved locally.
Thanks in advance

I have VS Code with extensions connected to IRIS for Health. One top-level ObjectScript package is not displayed in the workspace for this namespace. This package exists in the namespace and is visible in SMP. If I create a new class with a different top-level package name (package that didn't previously exist) it will immediately appear in the workspace.

Is there any debug logging I can enable to look for errors or do any other troubleshooting?

Forgot to mention: the missing package is custom, not a system package.

Hey Community,

Enjoy the new video on InterSystems Developers YouTube:

⏯ VS Code Server side editing vs Client side editing

Hi,

We are currently switching from Studio to VSCode and central GIT with Serverside Development and have a few start problems.
I have set up a system with Git.

The baseline commit including remote push works. 

But now I have a problem with the VSCode. When I create and compile a new class, it saves it correctly. But if I want to make further changes to the class, it saves the class and loads it again with the previous status.  So the changes I made are gone again.   

I have deactivated CompileOnSave without success.
The log shows the following

It's been a while since I've posted about Embedded Git on the Developer Community, and I'd like to provide an update on the massive amount of work we've done this year and where we're going next.

Context

If you're building solutions on IRIS and want to use Git, that's great! Just use VSCode with a local git repo and push your changes out to the server - it's that easy.

But what if:

Hello,

I am currently trying to edit server side code for TrakCare using Visual Studio Code with  intersystems-community.vscode-objectscript version 2.12.11-beta.1.

I can correctly check out the .mac file but when I try to either File > Save or use command 'ObjectScript: Import and Compile Current File' I get a very generic error .

I cannot find any details anywhere in the Output section.

I have reinstalled all extensions several times.

Any hints would be much appreciated.

Thanks! Daniele

Hi, I'm trying to use the iris python package to create a connection to and Iris Health instance (Docker Container), but getting and error. I can login to the instance using the UI with the same uname/password but unable to create the python connection. Any suggestions?

conn = iris.connect("testserver",52222,"%SYS","username","password")

After executing this I get an exception trap
An error occurred: Invalid Message Count: expected: 1 got: 825110831

I'm sure I've seen this issue reported before, but a search hasn't turned it up.

This appears to happen randomly, but once it starts it doesn't seem to stop ... at least for a while. I attempt to compile a class and compilation fails but produces no error explaining why. Here's an example:

The last two compilation errors repeat indefinitely (or at least until I've found and fixed the issue), but I can open the class in Studio, compile, and get the error information in the output panel every time. The compilation qualifiers are the same in both.

I have installed three plugins on VS Code: Intersystems Language Server: v2.3.6, Intersystems ObjectScript: v2.10.5, and Intersystems Server Manager: v3.6.2. I connected to the Caché database and connected a workspace to the InterSystems server. Then I edited the code locally on my client machine. However, only modifying the code and adding new code files allow for automatic updates on the server after executing "import without compilation." Deleting code files does not achieve this; I need to return to Explorer to delete them, and then the code files can only be truly deleted on the server

Another VSCode "Tips & Tricks" entry -

Do you want to see this option in VSCode?

Hello my Friends,

I have a question, I have a data like this

And I want to create a display like this, which I can put a status column beside the Item Column

The status become new, if there's no previous item, and if there's a same item after the first one, the status become Old

Does anyone could help me ?

I need to display it without subquery if possible

Thank You

Best Regards,

Steven Henry

Earlier this year I announced availability of a VS Code extension for coding in ObjectScript, Embedded Python or SQL using the notebook paradigm popularized by Jupyter. Today I published a maintenance release to correct a "getting started" problem.

Here's a video of the installation steps from the extension's README:

(video superseded by an update in a later comment)

Why not try it for yourself?