I'd like to use VS Code more effectively for managing my Azure environment, but several official extensions seem seriously outdated. For example, the Azure Automation extension hasn't been updated in about two years and still depends on the deprecated Azure Account extension. That dependency also makes it difficult to get some other Azure extensions working. Is Microsoft moving away from maintaining these tools, or is there a newer recommended approach?
2 Answers
Microsoft seems to be putting much more emphasis on AI-focused tooling, such as GitHub Copilot, than on keeping every Azure management extension current. For infrastructure work, the usual recommendation is to use infrastructure as code—Bicep, Terraform, or similar—instead of relying on VS Code extensions to make changes directly.
The GitHub Copilot extension is one of the more actively developed parts of the Azure-related VS Code experience, but it doesn’t really replace the older account and resource-management extensions. For dependable deployments, it’s safer to use the Azure CLI or PowerShell together with Bicep or another IaC tool, treating VS Code mainly as the place where you author and validate the files.
You still need an editor to write Bicep or Terraform, though. VS Code extensions are useful for syntax support, validation, and authoring even when the actual deployment is handled through infrastructure as code.