How to Get Any Extension to Work With VSCodium

posted on Feb, 20 2022
Florent Dufour · München

A student recently asked me how I managed to get the “Remote Development Extension Pack” provided by Microsoft to work with the open source software VSCodium¹. The trick is underwhelming.

I have both Visual Studio Code (VS Code) and VSCodium installed on my machine. From the terminal:

~$ cd ~/.vscode-oss
~$ ln -s ../.vscode/extensions extensions

creates a symbolic link VSCodium will follow to initialize the extensions from the VS Code folder. This is much easier than compiling extensions into .vsix archives (when it is even possible). VS Code is now relegated to a mere store front I use to install extensions.

1. While VSCodium is point to point VS Code (except the Microsoft telemetry and branding), it does not tap into the Microsoft license protected store. Instead, only a limited set of extensions are made available via the Open VSX Registry. ↩

Categories:  #development