Essential VSCode Extensions for a DevOps Engineer with a Flavor of Rust

As a DevOps engineer with a flavor of Rust, I prefer to use Visual Studio Code for my daily work. I know many opt out for emacs, vim or other but VSCode has always been my go to and I just got so used to it that I cannot switch.

Over the years, I have experimented with a variety of VSCode extensions, exploring what works best for my workflow.

In this article, I've compiled the extensions that I can't go without and tools that significantly up my productivity. I decided to categorize the extensions based on the following criteria:

• DevOps Tools

• Rust Development Tools

• Extensions for Coding Efficiency

• Linting, Quality Control, Markdown & Documentation

• Theming, Visuals & Misc

DevOps Tools

DevOps tools are the hardest to categorize, as the technologies I work with change from project to project. However, the core technologies I use daily include: cloud platforms (AWS or other cloud providers), Terraform & Kubernetes.

• IAM Legend by Sebastian Bille: Provides AWS IAM actions autocomplete, documentation, and wildcard resolution for Visual Studio Code. It works with the Serverless Framework, AWS SAM, CloudFormation, and Terraform, making it easier to work with AWS permissions and infrastructure-as-code in your projects.

  

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• HashiCorp Terraform by HashiCorp: VS Code doesn't provide syntax highlighting for Terraform, this is why it is a must to install this plugin.

  

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• Remote - SSH by Microsoft: Lets you develop directly on any remote machine with an SSH server. It is perfect for working on different OSes, using more powerful hardware, or accessing environments from anywhere. You can switch between remote setups easily and troubleshoot apps running on other machines, whether in the cloud or at a customer site, without affecting your local machine. It is a lightweight and user-friendly plugin.

  

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• Live Share by Microsoft: Another good plugin by Microsoft. Visual Studio Live Share lets you collaborate in real time with your friends or coworkers. You can easily share your project, debugging sessions, terminals, and even localhost web apps. Anyone who joins your session gets all the editor context they need, like language services and debugging, without having to clone repos or install SDKs. It's a simple way to collab with others. Make sure you restrict permissions to those joining your session.

Rust Development

• rust-analyzer by The Rust Programming Language: A must plugin for Rust development that brings a ton of helpful features. It offers code completion with automatic import insertion. You can easily go to definitions, implementations, and type definitions, and find all references with just a click. It also supports workspace symbol search and symbol renaming.

  Hovering over your code shows types and documentation, plus it provides inlay hints for types and parameter names. With semantic syntax highlighting, you get a clearer view of your code structure. On top of that, it has tons of assists (code actions) and can even apply suggestions from errors automatically, making debugging way easier.

• Dependi by Fill Labs: Comes in pro and free versions. It provides clear and concise views of all your project dependencies, making it easy to manage updates and versions. Dependi supports multiple languages such as Rust, Go, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python and PHP. I find it really useful for Rust cargos, it shows you a green check emoji if your dependencies are good to go. The pro version also comes with report generation for vulenrabitilies in the dependencies, super cool if you ask me.

Coding Efficiency

• GitLens — Git supercharged by GitKraken: GitLens sis a tool for managing Git and understanding how your code has evolved. It comes in community and pro editions. Features include blame annotations, hovers, and CodeLens, which helps you easily see who made changes and when. You can also track the history of any file with Revision Navigation. However, if you want to view a git graph, you'll need to upgrade to the Pro edition.

• Git Graph by mhutchie: Speaks for itself. Allows you to view Git Graph of your repository, and easily perform Git actions from the graph. Configurable to look the way you want! 100% free. Unfortunately it is not maintained anymore but the plugin lives on.

• Bookmarks by Alessandro Fragnani: Helps you navigate through your code faster and more easily by marking important positions. It supports selection commands, so you can quickly jump to bookmarked lines. You can mark and unmark positions, give them names, and jump forward or backward between bookmarks. It even has gutter and overview ruler icons for better visibility, plus a sidebar for quick access to all your bookmarks.

  However, I did run into some issues with this plugin couple times. There have been times when my bookmarks disappeared, most probably because I pulled new changes into my repo. Not sure if this issue has been since fixed.

• Surround by Mehmet Yatkı: A really handy tool that makes wrapping code blocks super easy. Honestly beats me how this is not natively integrated into VS Code. It supports language identifiers, multi-selections, and is fully customizable. You can create custom wrapper snippets and even assign separate shortcuts for each one. It also preserves your indentations and sorts your most recently used snippets on top.

• Todo Tree by Gruntfuggly: This extension uses ripgrep to quickly search your workspace for comment tags like TODO and FIXME, then shows them in a neat tree view on the activity bar. You can drag this view out into the explorer pane or anywhere else you want it. When you click on a TODO in the tree, it'll open the file and take you straight to that line. Plus, any TODOs in open files will be highlighted, really useful for ADHD folks such as myself. It is also easily customizable to your taste.

Linting, Quality Control, Markdown & Documentation

• ShellCheck by Timon Wong: A really powerful tool that catches mistakes early, so you don't have to spend hours fixing issues later. It makes your code cleaner, easier to read, and ensures everything runs smoothly. Especially useful for legacy script. It also works flawlessly on both Windows and Linux with zero setup. Plus, you can set it up to check your code as you type or when you save. It even auto-fixes errors and plays well with your CI/CD pipeline. Honestly, it's a must for anyone who wants to keep their shell scripts sharp because it is pretty much impossible to write a good shell script without this extension enabled.

• Strict Whitespace by Peter Simonsson: Incredibly useful for both DevOps engineers and developers because proper whitespace is critical in many file types, especially configuration files like YAML, JSON, and Python scripts occasionally. The plugin directly highlights where you have missed whitespaces so you can easily remove them.

• YAML by Red Hat: This extension makes it so much easier to work with YAML by highlighting syntax, catching errors, and even formatting files for you. It's a huge time saver and helps avoid those annoying little mistakes that can break everything.

Theming, Visuals & Misc

• Light Pink Theme by mgwg: A soft and aesthetic color theme for coding. It is really simple, cute, and the pink hue is easy on the eyes. My VSCode is never complete without it.

This Theme also comes in dark mode for those that prefer this mode, perfect for both light and darkmode users who like pink colors.

• Bongo Cat by pixlr garden: Adds a small bongo-playing cat to your status bar that starts drumming whenever you begin typing. dun-dun-pah.

• vscode-pets by Anthony Shaw: Adds virtual pets to your editor. Choose between a bored cat, an enthusiastic dog, a feisty snake, a rubber duck, or many others and spawn them straight into your editor. You can also pick a fun background. Honestly I miss my cats when I am at the office, so this plugin keeps me company before I get home everyday.

• Learn Vim by vintharas: World domination continues. Learn Vim right within VSCode by solving fun exercises.