Install VS Code on Raspberry Pi 3

This blog post is a little outside SharePoint, which is generally what I tend to blog about. As a side project, I’m working w/ my daughter to build her class computer lab. I purchased 5 raspberry pi 3b kits and tried to follow Scott Hanselman’s blog post on installing VS Code. Here are the latest steps that worked for me. The version of Raspbian is the latest Nov 2016 (Pixel).

Pre-Build Configuration

When we build the source code for VS Code, it will throw an error related to node-native-keymap. We will still need to install the supporting libraries first by running the following command:

sudo apt-get install libx11-dev

Next, we need to install the latest version of nodejs. I went w/ the 7.x branch:

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_7.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install nodejs

Build VS Code

Now to compile the source code. From the home directory, I ran the following to get the latest source code:

mkdir projects && cd $_
git clone https://github.com/microsoft/vscode

To build the source code, run the following command:

cd ~/projects/vscode
./scripts/npm.sh install --arch=armhf

Run an instance of VS Code, by running the following command:

cd ~/projects/vscode
./scripts/code.sh

Note - Running VS Code the first time will take some time, but will be faster afterwards.

Create a Start Menu Shortcut

The last part is optional, but will be easier for the kids to run VS Code. Perform the following:

1) Start Menu -> Preferences -> Main Menu Editor 2) Click on “Programming” from the left menu 3) Click on “New Item” to add a new menu icon to the “Programming” menu 4) Set the Name as “VS Code” and Browse to the following location:

/home/pi/projects/vscode/scripts/code.sh

5) You can optional download a VS Code logo and set it as the logo for the menu item. I downloaded this logo.