Visual Studio Code 1.67 tunes file nesting, Markdown navigation

With Visual Studio Code 1.67, aka the April 2022 release of Microsoft’s popular code editor, specific attention is paid to Explorer file nesting and Markdown code navigation. The release also brings Java extension updates.

Published May 5, Visual Studio Code 1.67 can be downloaded from the project website for Linux, Windows, or Mac.

With the update, Visual Studio Code’s Explorer tool, for browsing and managing files and folders, now supports nesting related files based on names. Settings for controlling this behavior include explorer.fileNesting.enabled, which allows you to enable nesting globally or for a specific workspace; explorer.fileNesting.expand, which controls whether nested files are expanded by default; and explorer.fileNesting.patterns, which controls how files are nested. File nesting had been available in an experimental fashion for several iterations.

Visual Studio Code 1.67 also introduces a number of Markdown navigation features. The editor now enables running Find All References in Markdown files for headers, allowing developers to see all places where a given header is used within a current workspace, including links from other Markdown files. VS Code also now supports finding all reference links within the current file, finding all references to a given Markdown file in the current workspace, and finding all places where a given URL is used in the current workspace.

New rename support in Markdown, meanwhile, allows VS Code users to rename headers or reference link in a Markdown file. Renaming a header will update all known links to the header in the current workspace, while renaming a reference link will update all reference links in the current file. Also, Markdown links can be created by dragging and dropping files from Explorer into a Markdown editor.

Other new features and improvements in Visual Studio Code 1.67:

• The Java language service in the Extension Pack for Java now supports inlay hints to show parameter names for method signatures. The Debugger for Java extension now supports lazy variables, letting developers defer operations for an expensive variable until explicitly expanding the debugger UI to its value.
• A json.validate.enable setting lets developers turn off JSON validation.
• The Settings editor search control adds a funnel button on the right side, to show a list of filters that can be applied to the search query to filter results.
• Visual Studio Code for the Web now respects the window.openFoldersInNewWindow setting when using the Open Remote Repository picker. This aligns picker behavior with other versions of VS Code and replaces the Open in New Window Quick Pick Item button.
• Developers that have the git.untrackedChanges setting on hidden will experience better performance when working with large repositories. A github.gitProtocol setting lets users change the default protocol when cloning a repository from GitHub.
• The scm.repositories.sortOrder setting has been introduced to control the default sort order of the repositories displayed in the Source Control Repositories view.
• Bracket pair colorization, introduced in the Visual Studio Code 1.60 release last summer, is enabled by default.