How To Install Visual Studio Code on Debian 9 Stretch

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Visual Studio Code on Debian 9 server. For those of you who didn’t know, Visual Studio Code provides developers with a new choice of developer tool that combines the simplicity and streamlined experience of a code editor with the best of what developers need for their core code-edit debug cycle. Visual Studio Code is available free for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of Visual Studio Code on a Debian 9 (Stretch) server.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Debian 9 (Stretch).
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install Visual Studio Code on Debian 9 Stretch

Step 1. Before we install any software, it’s important to make sure your system is up to date by running the following apt-get commands in the terminal:

apt update
apt upgrade
apt install software-properties-common apt-transport-https curl

Step 2. Install Visual Studio Code on Debian 9.

First, Import the Microsoft GPG key using the following curl command:

curl -sSL https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc | sudo apt-key add -

Then, Add the Visual Studio Code repository to your system:

sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/vscode stable main"

Once the repository is added, install the latest version of Visual Studio Code using the following command:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install code

Step 3. Starting Visual Studio Code.

Once the VS Code is installed on your Debian system you can launch it either from the command line by typing the code or by clicking on the VS Code icon (Activities -> Visual Studio Code).

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Visual Studio Code. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Visual Studio on your Debian 9 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Visual Studio Code website.