Microsoft has just released a beta of Node.js Tools for Visual Studio, also known as NTVS. Notable for this release is support for the free version of Visual Studio, known formally as Visual Studio Express for Web.
Work has continued on the integrated debugger support for the V8 JavaScript engine. Somasegar writes “The debugging support in NTVS supports all the core debugging features developers expect in Visual Studio: breakpoints, call-stacks, locals, watches, conditional breakpoints, filters, when-hit actions, and more.”. Debugging is supported both locally and on Windows or Linux-based Azure servers.
New for this version is support for edit and continue. As with other languages and runtimes, this means that you don’t need to restart the server when making code changes.
Another new feature in this edition is support for the recently released TypeScript.
Somasegar continues,
Another new feature in this release is support for Azure Worker Roles. Developer can now use integrated tools to deploy to either Azure Web Sites or Azure Worker Roles. By using worker roles, you can build managed backend services loosely coupled to your front end web endpoints.
Node Tools for Visual Studio is released as an open source project under the Apache license. It was developed by Microsoft in conjunction with RedGate and Clickberry.