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Task in VS Code aren't limited to what the application can detect

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in tools like npm and Gulp.

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You can also create your own custom tasks to launch any script

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or process you have permission to run on your computer.

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It's all done by configuring additional task in your

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tasks.json file, like the one here

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we customized earlier. To add a custom task,

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I could just copy the one already in this file and paste it as a

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second element in the task array.

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I could then make whatever changes I want to it.

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However, I want to show you how to create a custom task

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if you don't already have a tasks.json file in your project.

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I'll first close the existing file.

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I'll then delete it in the file explorer.

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Remember that it lives in the .vscode directory.

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I'll now open the command palette and search for task.

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I'm going to run the configure task command. That auto detects the

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two npm scripts I already discussed,

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but just below that is an option to create tasks.json file

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from template.

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Since I no longer have a tasks.json file in my project,

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that's what I'm going to select.

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The next choice I have to make is which template to use.

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You can see there are several for different build environments,

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but I'm going to select others at the bottom of the list.

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It's the most flexible and lets me effectively configure

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whatever I want.

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That creates a new tasks.json file in my .vscode directory.

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It has a single basic task in the file ready for me to customize.

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I'm going to customize it to run a PowerShell command that will show

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me all of the VS Code processes running on my computer.

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The first thing I'll do is change the label value to be something

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more descriptive.

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This is the text I'll see when picking the task from a list.

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I'll change it to show VS Code processes.

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The type property can be set to either shell as you see here

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or process. You use shell

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if you're going to have the task

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execute a shell script and process, if you're going to launch

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some other program.

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Since I'm going to run a PowerShell command,

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I'll leave it set to shell. Before I set the command value,

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I want to set the properties that will specifically run PowerShell.

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To do that, I'll first add the options element.

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It's assigned an object.

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That object has a shell property.

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It is also assigned an object.

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The properties available on it are the path to the shell executable

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and an args property for any options you want to pass

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to that executable.

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I'll set the executable property to PowerShell.

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Windows will find it without me providing a full path,

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but if I were using a different shell,

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I would provide the full path to the executable.

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I don't need to pass any arguments to it.

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I've now configured the task to use PowerShell.

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The next step is to specify the command execute in the shell.

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I do that with the cleverly named command property below.

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I'll have it run the PowerShell commandlet

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"Get-Process."

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I want to pass an argument to it,

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so I'll also add the args property.

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The value for this is an array, but I'll just pass it the

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single string code, which will filter the list of

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processes to just those containing that string.

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The last property I'm going to add to this task is named

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problemMatcher.

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Problem matchers process the output from a task and can present

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output from them in the editor or problems panel.

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VS Code ships with several problem matchers for TypeScript,

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ESLint, and a few other tools.

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You can also create your own using regular expressions to process

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the text output by the task.

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I'm not too concerned about my task generating errors,

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so I'm going to leave the problem matcher array empty.

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There are a few other properties you can explore when configuring

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your task, but this is a pretty complete

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example and all I need to review some basic process information.

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Let's now try it out.

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I'll run the task from the command palette.

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I'll search for task and then select "Run Task."

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Show VS Code processes now appears in the list of available task.

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I can just press "Enter" to run it.

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That starts PowerShell in a new terminal window and runs the

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Get-Process command with the code argument I specified on the task.

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The output shows me the processes being used by VS Code right now.

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Tasks are a great way to run common developer tools and scripts

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right inside VS Code.

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It's another feature that helps you do more of the things you need

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to do without switching to another application or environment.

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Okay. The last topic I'm going to cover in the course is debugging

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inside VS Code.

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If you never have bugs in your code,

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then feel free to skip the next chapter.

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For everyone else, you should probably keep watching.