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I’m switching from VS Code to VS Codium
- Asraelite 4y agoThe last time I tried Codium, not being able to use Remote Development was a showstopper. Has the situation improved since then?
- lelandfe 4y agoNo, and don't expect it or Live Share to ever land[0]. None of the "Remote" extensions are FOSS, and they restrict usage to "validly licensed" copies of VS Code[1] – plus the server side code for it is closed source. So getting it into Codium would require a clean room implementation, essentially. [0] https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/wiki/Extensions-Compatibility https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/wiki/Extensions-Compati...] [1] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items/ms-vscode-remote.vscode-remote-extensionpack/license https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items/ms-vscode-remote....
- q-big 4y ago> So getting it into Codium would require a clean room implementation, essentially ... if you want to go the legal route. ;-)
- xaberus 4y agoThe extension API proposals and RPC protocol are open sourced and the server code is just an electron-less version of the regular VSCode extension host (hence, remote extension host, REH). This is all part of the VSCode OSS release. What the proprietary extensions provide is integration. For example, the SSH variant automatically installs and launches an REH instance on the remote host and sets up port forwarding. If you are willing to start the instance and to forward ports yourself, you can use the tiny extension I wrote [1,2] (See the README how to enable the necessary extension proposals.). It allows you to connect to a local port you configure in the config. It is based on an example extension (vscode-test-resolver) in the OSS release that is used to test this functionality [3]. Microsoft is not really hiding any of this, so I am a little surprised, that nobody wrote a similar extension so far... [1] https://open-vsx.org/extension/xaberus/remote-oss https://open-vsx.org/extension/xaberus/remote-oss [2] https://github.com/xaberus/vscode-remote-oss https://github.com/xaberus/vscode-remote-oss [3] https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/tree/main/extensions/vscode-test-resolver https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/tree/main/extensions/vsc...
- lelandfe 4y agoNice work! The Remote Development license I linked earlier specifically excludes one from "reverse engineer[ing]" the code – which appears also to apply "to any Microsoft services... for the software". IANAL, but I'd definitely be nervous to touch this stuff with a 10ft pole.
- linuxdaemon 4y agoAs a person who administers servers I absolutely HATE that vscode does this. I don't know much about the specifics of remote deployment, but I feel like having vscode do this is just the wrong approach. I would say it probably needs to be some other CI/CD pipeline or something outside of the editor. The problems I have is that every user gets like 1.5G of node junk stuffed in their home directory to support this. VScode spawns processes as the user that can't be controlled that can just kill servers (This is one bug I found, but there are issues with this that go much farther back than 2 years ago, https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-remote-release/issues/2692 https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-remote-release/issues/26...) There doesn't seem to be any way to control this on the server side, so if I have users with the ability to write to their home directory, I cannot stop them from pushing this and potentially killing an instance.
- mattl 4y ago(Proprietary is spelled propriety in a few places.) I’m surprised VS Codium is so well packaged..
- sampo 4y agoAnd principle is spelled principal in one place. I wonder if principle/principal border/boarder could have/could of their/they're its/it's will just become accepted alternative English spellings in time?
- tasuki 4y agoThe whole article is full of typos and misspellings. Doesn't appear to be particularly insightful either...
- madeofpalk 4y ago> I was increasingly getting upset about their extension marketplace, where there is an increased number of extensions starting to sell pro versions of the extensions we used for free. I'm not familiar with any particularly egregious examples, but I don't find "developer wants to sell software" all that outrageous.
- 0x008 4y agoGitlens is the most popular example, I guess?
- codeflo 4y agoIt’s a real problem. GitLens[0] comes to mind, which used to be a decent free extension, but now gives me flashbacks to the shareware nag screens of old. I’m also not against selling software on principle. Downgrading a free piece of software into a demo with an auto-update feels shady, however. [0] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=eamodio.gitlens https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=eamodio....
- NikolaNovak 4y agocan you elaborate? "I made something people seem to like, hopefully it can help feed my family" sounds more like a wonderful success story rather than shady (depending on target audience of course but that's the part I'd like to understand better rather than make assumptions)
- misnome 4y agoI have been using GitLens for years, and didn't even know they had a paid version. Where have they been "Nagging" that I've just never seen?
- dschuessler 4y agoRight next to your terminal should be a tab called "Gitlens: Visual File History". I do not want to argue whether its contents qualify as nagging but it might be what OP is referring to.
- pizza234 4y ago> I was increasingly getting upset about their extension marketplace, where there is an increased number of extensions starting to sell pro versions of the extensions we used for free. This is actually great news. Some extensions, especially language ones, are very poor, and paying for them (if someone makes a commercial version) is the only way to guarantee a good development experience. Ruby is an example, and switching to IntelliJ is not smooth for people used to VSC.
- rnd420_69 4y agoreminds me when Bethesda tried to introduce paid mods on Steam. I was greatly excited about that for the reasons you state. But the gaming community being physically or mentally at an age of 14 prevented that with quite an outreach. Would've thought someone with enough braincells to learn programming would look at this differently, but there you have it.
- devwastaken 4y agoTheft. That's the reason. People could upload others mods to be paid. Or they would use assets they were not allowed to sell. The cost of litigating this is far too high, therefore a system that allows the theft cannot be regulated civilly. Meaning the system should not exist. Mods work better in an open and free environment that lacks monetary incentives.
- xeromal 4y agoWe can't figure out how to protect content creators so they should just do work for free seems like a cop out to me.
- BlueDingo 4y agoOr maybe they know the cost and it isn't worth it to them? The poster you respond to mentions litigation. That's how IP theft is handled. How much legal fees does anyone want to incur for due diligence or litigation or defense for mods and plug-ins. Only the top few will earn enough to justify the effort. Everything under that will be left to fester. Quality free and low cost mods will get copied and promoted to scam money and the people working hard, that you and I both wish to help and support, would get no help or compensation.
- Kwpolska 4y agoTheir main argument is “no telemetry” (or sometimes “no cemetery tracking”…), but VS Code has a setting to disable telemetry [0], and I would trust that it’s really disabled if you set it so (why would they lie about something quite trivial to check with Wireshark or such?) > I’m sure there is a small performance gain because you don’t have telemetry running in the background sending data to Microsoft. Have you profiled it? Have you compared VSCodium and VSCode with telemetry off? [0]: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstarted/telemetry https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstarted/telemetry
- madeofpalk 4y agoThe open-vsx.org loads Google Analytics (via GTM) for telemetry, without any prompts or consent, with no way to opt out of it AFAICT.
- btdmaster 4y agoVS Codium has tried, and not succeeded, to disable all telemetry[0][1]. This is with direct access to and patches to source code and all the knobs set to off. If the direction of upstream is diametrically opposed to downstream, it is nearly impossible to prevent these issues. [0] https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/issues/623 https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/issues/623 [1] https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/issues/631 https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/issues/631
- Beltalowda 4y agoNeither of those issues describe any telemetry, unless you define "telemetry" as "uses any internet connectivity that's not even to Microsoft's servers".
- btdmaster 4y agoIs the default npm registry not operated by Microsoft? GitHub definitely is, and that was one of the pings.
- 4y ago
- cageface 4y agoIf you're really that concerned about using propriety software why not help build the emacs or vim ecosystem instead?
- Karsteski 4y agoBecause some people don't necessarily want to tinker with emacs or vim for days just to get their perfect setup going
- otikik 4y ago> for days Ha! :wq
- sn41 4y agodays? Surely, you jest, dear Sir. Proud emacs user for 21 years, still have to get some overlay function going just the way I like it. One of these days, I am going to get it just right.
- joe8756438 4y agoJoking aside, I think that’s one of the great things about emacs: years will go by and i won’t touch my config. Then a new project or something will inspire me to get back into it. But since switching about a decade ago, i’ve never had the itch to move to a different “editor”
- cageface 4y agoConvenience or freedom. Pick one.
- CoastalCoder 4y agoI don't understand that reasoning. Wouldn't an editor ecosystem based on Codium be as open-source as Emacs' and Vim's? Are you referring to some difference in their specific licenses?
- kklimonda 4y ago
- fartcannon 4y agoLuckily, contrary to what the Microsoft hoard will tell you, there are countless respectful alternatives that were around before and will be around long after Microsoft turns it into some kind of pay to win thing with achievements.
- mangamadaiyan 4y agoNitpick: s/hoard/horde/g
- jo-m 4y agoNitpick: g flag not necessary here ;)
- fartcannon 4y agoMerci beaucoup
- stinos 4y agoI want to believe this, but my experience with VSCode generally goes like this: I find a bug in a tool I rely on or want to make a PR with some feature I think could be generally useful. Turns out the tool uses a language I've not used before, or requires me to test for multiple platforms, or something. In any case I have to start from scratch. So I just lookup 'how to X in VSCode' and/or open VSCode, go to Extensions. Follow some simple instructions, get what's needed and a couple minutes later I'm developing. And fairly decent step-by-step debugging + watch windows and whatnot. And debugging remotely on another platform. And sometimes VS Code then also offered to install the complete toolset needed on that platform. Now, maybe I've just been lucky, or toolsets just got better overall, or maybe I've missed something, but when I did this 20 years ago there was a good chance I was looking at a non-trivial amount of research, finding tools, fiddling with config files, text-based debugging at best sometimes or hideous IDEs, etc. So alternatives exist, one can call them respectful, but turns out for a couple of usecases that's besides the point: the experience for one-off 'let me just quickly try this in whatever is the cool language of the day' is, as far as I'm aware, simply unsurpassed. And that's the strength for me. Not sure if I'd be paying for that, but right now it's just what it is.
- buf 4y agoI started using vim 13 years ago. Editors come. Editors go. Vim remains.
- mangamadaiyan 4y agoAbsolutely. On a tangential note, "Your problem with vim is that you don't grok vi" continues to be a favourite read: https://gist.github.com/nifl/1178878 https://gist.github.com/nifl/1178878
- bornfreddy 4y agoThank you, I might give vi another go. Btw, for reading, raw version is better: https://gist.githubusercontent.com/nifl/1178878/raw/2a20bba892b5f1b0fb296a0fdf0380d4366ff1fc/grok_vi.mdown https://gist.githubusercontent.com/nifl/1178878/raw/2a20bba8...
- miracloblo 4y ago
- johnny22 4y agothe problem isn't the process of using vim. I like that part. The part i dislike is the ecosystem of plugins and extension points.
- AlexandrB 4y agoYes. Learning Vim has had the best ROI for my time of any other tool I've learned over the years (git comes close though). Not only is it a great general-purpose editor, but it's available on every machine I interact with.
- wildrhythms 4y agoI always come back to vim. Sure there are "vim mode" options for VS Code, Jetbrains products, Xcode, whatever else, but there is a speed and ergonomics to regular old vim that none of those bolted-on modes have matched yet. And with some setup you can get the same LSP features in vim that you have in VS Code today.
- jmyeet 4y agoWhat I find truly bizarre is how many software engineers, who are aware of how much they earn and how long it really takes to make software, are so resistant to paying anything for tools that make their job easier and faster. It blows my mind. Take the Jetbrains IDEs. I don't mean to offend any VSC fans out there but the Jetbrains IDEs are simply better and more mature in every single way. For individual use, most of them are <$100/year. In years past I saw this same struggle with IntelliJ vs Eclipse or even vim/emacs. The amount of time I saw people spend on tuning, fixing, tinkering, debugging and otherwise modifying their .vim or .emacs files or their various incompatible Eclipse plugins (eg famously there were 2 big big plugins for Eclipse at one point and neither of them completely worked). At least with vim/emacs it works over an SSH connection but Eclipse? Why are so many resistant so other people earning a living particularly when the payoff (ie time-saved) is so easily quantifiable? And why do people who generally earn so much value their time so little?
- chadlavi 4y agoPersonal use is a different question, but if my employer doesn't pay for it I'm not buying software to use for their benefit. Any a lot of employers go huh, a free one eh? Use that.
- alexalx666 4y agoActually, I recently had to switch from CLion to VSC b/c I could not figure out how to enable rust-analyzer in the latest version of CLion. Also platform.io support is better in VSC. I love UX of interllij tho. I should say that I do agree with your main point.
- roblabla 4y ago> I don't mean to offend any VSC fans out there but the Jetbrains IDEs are simply better and more mature in every single way. Yeah, no. Don't get me wrong, Jetbrains IDEs are great. But they're not as easy to extend, its proprietary nature makes it hard to debug when writing extensions. I use neovim primarily, but I've got licenses for a bunch of other editors (Nova, Sublime, used to have IntelliJ). I do sincerely try them, but I keep going back to open source, extensible editors like vim, emacs, vscode... because I invariably need to tweak something in the editor, and doing so in the proprietary editors can be so damn painful. Now, you do make a solid point though. I guess I probably should donate to neovim. Guess I'll go do that!
- gcoguiec 4y agoYou can use the VSCode extension gallery with VSCodium at your own risk[0]. [0] https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/DOCS.md#how-to-use-the-vs-code-marketplace https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/DOCS.md#how....
- sottero 4y agoPutting a lot of faith in this: “These extensions are uploaded by the official developers or by the community.”
- sharken 4y agoI originally read it as a different editor entirely than VS Code. The slight startup delay for VS Code vs. for example Notepad++ is quite annoying. I wish there was software as cool as VS Code, but with ultra low startup time.
- bitwize 4y agoSublime Text?
- sharken 4y agoMight try it, though the whole debugging experience in PowerShell in VS Code is quite good.
- CoastalCoder 4y agoIs this attributed to VS Code's use of Electron? I'm curious if VS Code's design makes it practical to replace Electron with another framework. E.g., Qt, GTK, simpler HTML, or whatever's most idiomatic for Win64 GUIs these days.
- d12bb 4y agoNeovim?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gigatexal 4y agoVim users out here like: “Telemetry? What telemetry?” ;)
- wooque 4y agoI went backwards, from VS Codium to VS Code, because VS Codium does not support all extensions, like PyLance or Remote - SSH/containers. I like freedom, but I like getting things done more.
- bityard 4y agoI just did the same thing literally yesterday for the same reason. Disabled telemetry and hoping for the best.
- icelancer 4y agoI was considering switching and looking into Codium and then saw this comment. I'm not going without Remote-SSH or PyLance.
- Sujan 4y agoIt might be worth contacting these extensions' creators. If you already have the `.vsix` file for the VSCode marketplace, publishing to open-vsix is really super simple (create an account once, get a token, add a few lines to your publish script, e.g. https://github.com/prisma/language-tools/blob/94e4cd612d03ef84e3cac2acb041390f318ba907/.github/workflows/7_publish.yml#L106-L107 https://github.com/prisma/language-tools/blob/94e4cd612d03ef...). Some just do not know about it.
- cbarrick 4y agoPyLance and the remote extensions are developed by Microsoft. They intentionally do not work with the open source editor.
- Sujan 4y agoOh, I did not connect these dots. Shucks.
- whazor 4y agoHave you actually tried installing PyLance in VS Codium? I have not and also do not know if it works. But PyLance is available in https://open-vsx.org/extension/ms-python/python https://open-vsx.org/extension/ms-python/python and it seems there are no license issues.
- eatbitseveryday 4y ago> f [sic] you want to get the full open-source MIT-licensed VS Code with no cemetery [sic] tracking I prevent telemetry tracking by blocking all network access to VSC using Little Snitch. Get it set up initially with plugins then cut it off. I don’t use VSC in ways that require network access thereafter.
- arunc 4y agoI tried VS Codium early this year and went back to VS Code as clangd extension didn't work. Microsoft's C++ extension works great. I'll be interested to know if anyone has got clangd setup working on Windows.
- Havoc 4y agoAlas without ssh remote that’s a complete non starter for me
- irthomasthomas 4y agoI find sshfs more versatile. Works in vscodium and allows you to use native file browsers and other external tools on the same connection.
- no_circuit 4y agoI can partially understand the desire to switch if there are (free) plugins available on VS Codium that is not on VS Code. However leaving VS Code because of not trusting Microsoft's off switch for telemetry for the IDE and the plugins they provide is an unintentionally uninformed decision IMO. Of all actors, one should probably trust the privacy protections and off switch of a BigCo, like Microsoft, since they tend to know what would get them in trouble. On the other hand, you may not be able to rely on the open source plugin developers to do things right and protect your privacy, however, it usually can be a problem that can be fixed [1]. Do you read the source code of all of your plugins? Open source developers may have good intentions, but they may not be following telemetry guidelines or best practices. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31371979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31371979
- digisign 4y agoThe company that has been caught with its hand in the cookie jar… I don't know, several hundred times?
- antifa 4y agoThe company that doesn't wash it's hands, has it's pants down, is regularly stuffing it's mouth with stolen cookies, doesn't even bother to take it's hand out of the jar when responding to allegations, but also for some reason has numerous shills claiming has done nothing wrong.
- digisign 4y agoAwesome. Wouldn't have put it quite so creatively, yet not able to disagree either. :-D
- garyrob 4y ago> I don't mean to offend any VSC fans out there but the Jetbrains IDEs are simply better and more mature in every single way. I must admit that I used PyCharm for a few years but ended up liking VSC more, and now that's my IDE. Just seems lighter and more pleasant.
- bmitc 4y agoThe reasons to switch don't make sense. Microsoft provides builds for virtually every major platform and has extensive remote development options. Why is there a requirement to be building it from source? What is collected via telemetry is published, can be inspected with tools Microsoft provides or third party tools, and can be disabled. Why are some extensions providing paid versions while keeping the free versions around a bad thing?
- troutwine 4y ago> with no cemetery tracking FYI, if the author is here, I think you may have meant “telemetry” instead of “cemetery”.
- nsonha 4y agolot's of MS extensions are missing but you often find OSS alternatives. Most important for me is liveshare. I use codetogether.com, it's not remarkable (I got connection drop a couple of times) but it does the job with the added bonus that it works with IntelliJ too
- fithisux 4y agoDid it two weeks ago.
- ultim8k 4y agoI'm already paying for sublime text and a few other developer tools and I wouldn't mind paying for a tool that helps me pay my bills. Also I like that some of these products have a free version that makes it accessible to people coming from a poor economic background. Everyone deserves an equal opportunity in my opinion. Now my problem about big tech corps is that they are huge bullies. I want my freedom back. Freedom of not being locked in an ecosystem. Freedom to choose my tools. Freedom of not being tracked. Freedom of everyone to be in the market without being copied, acquired or overshadowed by huge companies that buy/clone/replace any product or tool with their "free of charge" poison. Freedom to stay away of "growth and engagement" bs products. Think of the following. How viable is to live without GMAIL nowdays? Do we want vscode to become the GMAIL of code?
- sbuk 4y ago> How viable is to live without GMAIL nowdays? Completely. In the corporate world, Microsoft is the dominant player, but on premise is still a thing, as are other ESPs. Gmail is nowhere near as dominant as people seem to think it is. They still transact over SMTP...
- einpoklum 4y ago> There is nothing wrong with an organization following an open-core princip[le]. In itself, maybe, but MS is crippling the ability to use the open core. Plus, there _is_ something wrong with using the state to prevent people from copying information amongst themselves. > Microsoft still has to pay for the developers who contribute to VS Code and other bills associated with VS Code and running the extension store. If that's the justification, then it's BS. Microsoft has enough money to pay for this stuff many time over. Plus, the indirect financial benefit of people working in an MS app or environment is high enough.