Microsoft Visual Studio can now be used to develop across all Renesas microcontrollers and microprocessor units (MCUs and MPUs). The company has added tool extensions for all of its embedded processors to the Microsoft VS Code website. By providing support for VS Code, Renesas expands greatly the number of coders able to create solutions for Renesas embedded devices.

The VS Code IDE is designed to simplify and accelerate code editing across a variety of platforms and operating systems. VS Code support complements Renesas’ own e2 studio IDE.

Renesas now enables customers to develop and debug embedded software using Visual Studio Code for its 16-bit RL78 and 32-bit RA, RX, and RH850 MCUs, as well as its 64-bit RZ MPUs and R-Car family SoCs. Renesas embedded processors are targeted at automotive, IoT, industrial automation, home appliance, health care and other applications.

“As the world’s leading MCU supplier, Renesas has a huge and loyal customer base, most of whom use our powerful e2 studio IDE to develop their applications,” said Akiya Fukui, Vice President and Head of the Software Development Division at Renesas.“By providing support for VS Code, we enable an even larger group of designers to develop embedded applications with Renesas embedded processors.”

“We welcome Renesas, a leader in the embedded processor market, to the Visual Studio Code community,” said Marc Goodner, Principal Product Manager, Microsoft. “The millions of developers using VS Code now have access to the very broad and efficient line of MCUs and MPUs from Renesas.”

Users can download VS Code free of charge, including access to the source code. They can use the Github pull request extension to make a source repository, then review and edit source code using VS Code. They can also utilise evolving extension features with simple user interface or flexible command interfaces.