Today we are releasing Visual Studio 2019 Preview 2, which contains new features for Python developers to improve the experience for managing Python environments and enable you to work with Python code without having to create a Python project. We’ve also enabled Python support for Visual Studio Live Share.
We’ll take a closer look at these new features in the rest of this post.
Creating Python Environments
To make it easier for you to create virtual or conda Python environments for your project, the ability to create Python environments has been moved from the Python environments window to a new Add environment dialog that can be opened from various parts of Visual Studio. This improves discoverability and enables new capabilities such as the ability to create conda environments on-demand and support for Open Folder described later in this post.
For example, when opening a project that contains a requirements.txt file or environment.yml but no virtual environment or conda environment is found, you will be prompted to create an environment with a notification: