Integrated Terminal in Visual Studio: New SSH integration for Linux targeting

In the latest version of Visual Studio, users are now able to leverage the integrated terminal to access their remote targets when developing for remote machines from Windows. This updated terminal includes an interactive SSH shell. It can be accessed by going to View->Terminal in Visual Studio. 

Now, instead of starting an SSH session inside of PowerShell or WSL and having to re-authenticate, you can select one of your existing connections with one click. The integrated terminal pulls from the stored connections established in your Connection Manager. You only have to authenticate once when you add a stored connection and then this authentication information will remain stored in Visual Studio, allowing for less downtime spent managing SSH connections that have timed out.  

In the upper left corner of the integrated terminal, you can click on the SSH connection selected and see the profile dropdown entries available that show connections enumerated from your Connection Manager. 

When you click on a connection from the dropdown, the terminal will spawn a new terminal instance that will remain docked next to your current terminal instance in the tabs below.  

Additionally, the new integrated terminal now supports manipulating files, running background tasks, configuring your remote system, and testing your deployed code all from inside of VS instead of having to use an external SSH client. This terminal also supports color and command sequences, so for example, copy, paste, and find shortcuts will work, as well as interactive programs like vim. 

Send us your feedback!

Download the latest version of Visual Studio and give the latest integrated terminal a try. Let us know your thoughts, and whether there is anything you’d like to see.  We are very interested in your feedback to continue to improve this experience. The comments below are open, or you can find us on Twitter (@VisualC), or via email at [email protected]. To open a bug, please see Visual Studio Feedback