Help Design the Next Version of Python Tools for Visual Studio

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Posted by Shahrokh Mortazavi, Partner Director of Program Management at Microsoft.

I am delighted to announce that for the upcoming version of Python Tools for Visual Studio, the product design process will be completely open. You are hereby cordially invited to participate in shaping PTVS 3.0!

PTVS 2.x was primarily focused on Desktop and Web App scenarios (although we had an IPython REPL and added the Azure ML Pack). You can see the full 2.2 feature list here. For 3.0, we want to really excite people doing Data Science. As such, we want to make sure that your features and key scenarios are taken into consideration.

How to Get Involved

PTVS sources, issue lists and discussions now reside on github. Getting involved is as simple as getting a github account and filing feature requests or commenting on existing topics:

1. Go to https://github.com to register.

2. Navigate to the Microsoft github repo for PTVS: https://github.com/Microsoft/PTVS.

3. Click on Milestones and select 3.0.

4. Then select an item and join the discussion. For example, here’s topic 747, which is viewing dataframes and 2D arrays in a grid.

Make Your Voice Count

The most effective way to get the dev team to pay attention to your favorite feature is to get involved in the discussion. Ideally you should go beyond adding just a “+1” to the thread and actually tell us something along the lines of: “I need a native dataframe viewer because …” so we have a good understanding of what you need and how you intend to use the feature.

The same goes for bug entries as well. We’ll do our best to prioritize bug fixes, but it’s always nice to know how much and how many customers are affected by a particular issue.

Of course another very effective way of making sure your particular feature or bug fix is implemented is to do it yourself and send us a pull request on github. We do accept PR’s and can help you with any questions you might have. If you are interested, start by simply building PTVS yourself.

Conclusion

The PTVS product design process is now public. You are part of our virtual design team. Join us and help make PTVS 3.0 the best release yet.

Shahrokh