VS Code

VS Code is a great lean alternative to Visual Studio for TinyCLR development — lighter, faster to open, and it deploys and debugs on SITCore hardware just as well. The C# you write is identical either way; what's different is the project itself. A Visual Studio TinyCLR project and a VS Code TinyCLR project are different project types — different templates, different tooling — so a project created in one doesn't open in the other. Pick the IDE per project, not per line of code.

This page covers the two things that work differently enough in VS Code to deserve their own walkthrough: creating a project, and adding resources. About 10 minutes.

note

What you'll need

• A SITCore board with TinyCLR firmware already flashed — see Install or update firmware if you haven't yet.

Step 1 — Create a project

1. Install Visual Studio Code if you don't already have it.

2. Install the TinyCLR extension. Search the Extensions view for tinyclr and install it — click "Switch to Pre-Release Version" if you want the newest features ahead of a stable release. The extension adds TinyCLR commands to the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P).

3. Open the Command Palette and run TinyCLR: New Project.

4. Pick the TinyCLR Application template when prompted.

5. Choose a folder and project name, then let the extension scaffold the project.

6. Plug your board into USB and press F5. The extension finds the device (showing options in the Command Palette if more than one is attached), compiles, and deploys. The starter code prints an incrementing counter to the Debug Console — confirming your dev machine and the SITCore board are talking. Stop the program when you're satisfied.

From here, Create Graphics works exactly the same in VS Code as in Visual Studio. Build a Touch UI, on the other hand, needs the UI Designer and the TinyCLR UI Application template — both Visual Studio-only — so that one's a Visual Studio tutorial.

Step 2 — Add a resource

Resources are binary assets — fonts, images, arbitrary files, strings — bundled into your app and loaded by name at runtime (the Resources page has the full reference). In Visual Studio, you add them by dragging files onto a Resources designer; in VS Code, the TinyCLR extension has a dedicated command for the same job.

1. Open the Command Palette and run TinyCLR: Add Resources.

2. Pick the kind of resource you're adding:

   Type	What it is	Accessor
   String	A text string you type in	Resources.GetString(...)
   Text File	A text file's contents, loaded as a string	Resources.GetString(...)
   Image	A BMP, JPG, or GIF	Resources.GetBitmap(...)
   Binary File	Any file, embedded as a byte[]	Resources.GetBytes(...)
   Font File	A converted .tinyfnt device font, embedded as a byte[]	Resources.GetBytes(...)

3. For file-based types, a file picker opens — pick the file and the extension does the rest: it embeds the file and adds a named identifier for it to the generated Resources class, the same enum-based pattern Visual Studio generates.

Load it the same way from C# regardless of which IDE added it:

var logo = Resources.GetBitmap(Resources.BitmapResources.Logo);

(Logo above is whatever name the resource got when you added it — swap in your own.)

tip

Font File expects an already-converted .tinyfnt file, not a raw .ttf. Convert your TrueType font first with the FontConverter tool (from the Downloads page) — see Font Support for sizes, character ranges, and anti-aliasing options.

Where to go next

• Create Graphics — bounce a ball and draw text on a SITCore display.
• Resources — the full reference on loading and partial-reading resources.
• Font Support — converting and using your own fonts.