I'd like to use VS Code more for managing my Azure environment, but several official extensions seem badly outdated. For example, the Azure Automation extension hasn't been updated in around two years and still depends on the deprecated Azure Account extension. That dependency also makes it difficult to get some other Azure tools working. Is Microsoft moving away from maintaining Azure-focused VS Code extensions, or is there a better-supported workflow I should be using?
2 Answers
The GitHub Copilot extension is one of the more actively maintained parts of the current VS Code ecosystem. For Azure deployments, it’s generally better to combine VS Code with Bicep or another IaC tool and use the Azure portal, CLI, or deployment pipelines for managing resources instead of relying heavily on older extension dependencies.
Microsoft’s current emphasis seems to be on AI-focused tooling, especially GitHub Copilot, rather than expanding the older collection of Azure management extensions. For infrastructure work, the more durable approach is usually Infrastructure as Code with tools such as Bicep, Terraform, or ARM templates, using VS Code mainly as the editor.
That still leaves the practical question of where and how people write and validate their Bicep files—VS Code is useful for that, even if the actual deployment is handled through IaC pipelines.