Skip to content

docs: update FAQ with extension gallery info #2672

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Merged
merged 2 commits into from
Feb 10, 2021
Merged
Changes from 1 commit
Commits
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension

Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
42 changes: 22 additions & 20 deletions docs/FAQ.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -64,9 +64,11 @@ See the [TOS](https://cdn.vsassets.io/v/M146_20190123.39/_content/Microsoft-Visu
> and you may only install and use Marketplace Offerings with Visual Studio Products and Services.

As a result, we cannot offer any extensions on the Microsoft marketplace. Instead,
we have created our own marketplace for open source extensions.
It works by scraping GitHub for VS Code extensions and building them. It's not perfect but getting
better by the day with more and more extensions.
we use the Open-VSX extension gallery, which is also used by various other forks.
It isn't perfect, but its getting better by the day with more and more extensions.

We also offer our own marketplace for open source extensions, but plan to
deprecate it at a future date and completely migrate to Open-VSX.

These are the closed source extensions presently unavailable:

Expand All @@ -79,25 +81,35 @@ For more about the closed source parts of VS Code, see [vscodium/vscodium](https

## How can I request a missing extension?

Please open a new issue and select the `Extension request` template.
To add an extension to Open-VSX, please see [open-vsx/publish-extensions](https://github.com/open-vsx/publish-extensions).
We no longer plan to add new extensions to our legacy extension gallery.

If an extension is not available or does not work, you can grab its VSIX from its Github releases or
build it yourself. Then run the `Extensions: Install from VSIX` command in the Command Palette and
point to the .vsix file.

See below for installing an extension from the cli.
You can install an extension on the CLI with:

```bash
# From the Coder extension marketplace
code-server --install-extension ms-python.python

# From a downloaded VSIX on the file system
code-server --install-extension downloaded-ms-python.python.vsix
```

## How do I configure the marketplace URL?

If you have your own marketplace that implements the VS Code Extension Gallery API, it is possible to
point code-server to it by setting `$SERVICE_URL` and `$ITEM_URL`. These correspond directly
If you have your own marketplace that implements the VS Code Extension Gallery API or
if you want to switch to our legacy gallery, it is possible to point code-server to it
by setting `$SERVICE_URL` and `$ITEM_URL`. These correspond directly
to `serviceUrl` and `itemUrl` in VS Code's `product.json`.

e.g. to use [open-vsx.org](https://open-vsx.org):
e.g. to use our [legacy extension gallery](https://xextensions.coder.com):

```bash
export SERVICE_URL=https://open-vsx.org/vscode/gallery
export ITEM_URL=https://open-vsx.org/vscode/item
export SERVICE_URL=https://extensions.coder.com/api
export ITEM_URL="" # intentionally blank
```

While you can technically use Microsoft's marketplace with these, please do not do so as it
Expand All @@ -117,16 +129,6 @@ Defaults to `~/.local/share/code-server/extensions`.
If the `XDG_DATA_HOME` environment variable is set the data directory will be
`$XDG_DATA_HOME/code-server/extensions`. In general we try to follow the XDG directory spec.

You can install an extension on the CLI with:

```bash
# From the Coder extension marketplace
code-server --install-extension ms-python.python

# From a downloaded VSIX on the file system
code-server --install-extension downloaded-ms-python.python.vsix
```

## How is this different from VS Code Codespaces?

VS Code Codespaces is a closed source and paid service by Microsoft. It also allows you to access
Expand Down