Full course description
Term: Summer 2026
Date: July 16th, 2026
Time: 11:15 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.
Location: Online Only
Instructor: Chris Kuhlman
Presented By: Advanced Research Computing (ARC)
Description:
Prerequisites:
If you want to follow to set up your system for use on compute nodes during the workshop, you need to have VS Code installed on your machine (e.g., laptop) and it will be helpful if you have used VS Code at least a little bit.
Preferred: Basic understanding of compute nodes vs. head nodes.
Preferred: Basic understanding of the activities permitted on compute vs. head nodes.
Preferred: An ARC account and access to ARC clusters.
Preferred: Access to a VT network (e.g., on campus [eduroam] or connected to VPN).
Preferred: Some familiarity with logging into ARC clusters from terminal windows.
Preferred: Familiarity with working in a linux shell environment.
Description:
One of the most frequently recurring inadmissible activities on ARC clusters is running VSCode on the login nodes of ARC clusters. VS Code can be used on login nodes, but only for code development (no use of plugins and no running code through VS Code). If you want fuller use of VS Code, what can you do? Answer: run VS Code on a compute node. On a compute node, you can use VS Code to: (1) develop source code, (2) use any number of plug-ins, (3) run code, and (4) debug code. To run on a compute node, requirements are: (1) a one-time setup, and (2) the small set of steps to start VS Code on a compute node. We will go through these steps so that at the end of the workshop, you will be running VS Code on a compute node. Come to the workshop with VS Code installed and running on your laptop. We will go from there.