10 ms·

OpenVSX, which VSCode forks rely on for extensions, down for 24 hours

249 points by aaronvg 1y ago

exceptione 1y ago
There is not much to see on a server that is down, so let me share some free advice instead. Visit Eclipse Theia in the mean time when you are serious about de-risking from VSCode. I think VSCodium is doing an uphill battle here, while Microsoft can't help them self being a sales company first. In Theia, everything is open and free of spyware. MS is under no obligation to provide an OSS editor, but playing tricks after luring people in is not nice. EDIT: 1. Eclipse Theia is a different platform than Eclipse the Java IDE. 2. link: https://theia-ide.org/#theiaidedownload https://theia-ide.org/#theiaidedownload
- mdaniel 1y ago
  https://theia-ide.org/docs/user_install_vscode_extensions/#compatibility https://theia-ide.org/docs/user_install_vscode_extensions/#c... (sigh) > Please note that a few parts of the VS Code extension API are only stubbed in Theia. Extensions will be installable, but some features might not work as expected. Also, I thought Theia was a cloud IDE, and it seems like I was mostly right in that 2/3rds of their offering is (localhost:3000 & docker) but they also now apparently bundle it in Electron which I haven't tried
  - exceptione 1y ago
    Note they say that most extensions are compatible, and those not listed as compatible might still be. The API surface covers almost 100% that of vscode, I only see some AI integration API's that are stubbed, and that is because Theia has their own vision here and doesn't want to depend on MS. The complete API compatibility list is here, the stubbed API's are not core imho: https://eclipse-theia.github.io/vscode-theia-comparator/status.html https://eclipse-theia.github.io/vscode-theia-comparator/stat...
- imcritic 1y ago
  Why would I switch from vscodium to theia?
  - bangaladore 1y ago
    Theia is not a fork of vscode (even though it looks like it). It uses VSCode's code editor (Monoco) and is written from the ground up. Presumably allowing it to support extensions, that for example, vscode does not. However, its early days.
    - mappu 1y ago
      > However, its early days. Theia has been out for eight years now,
      - bangaladore 1y ago
        Came out of beta less then a year ago. What I mean is adoption is slow (if even there), so I'm sure there is quite a lot missing. But that's probably fine, Theia seems to be focused more on the current audience of Eclipse which is vendor tooling (chipmakers, FPGA, custom toolchains) rather than being an editor you are supposed to use by itself.
    - TiredOfLife 1y ago
      Theia is not a fork except all the parts that are.
      - bangaladore 1y ago
        What parts are forked? Genuinely curious. Based on my quick reading they are just using Monaco code editor. That is 100% freely licensed as MIT. Monaco is just the line based text editor.
    - imcritic 1y ago
      This doesn't answer my question in the slightest. What does it offer so nice that vscodium doesn't have and that would push me to switch to theia?
- bsder 1y ago
  > MS is under no obligation to provide an OSS editor, but playing tricks after luring people in is not nice. Microsoft is partly to blame, but people have been warning about this over and over and over ad nauseam and people still choose to use VSCode. You couldn't even get people to not use the proprietary extensions for C/C++, Python and remote development. The problem is that Microsoft dedicates enough resource to development that everybody else looks like a rounding error. For example, anybody could have produced the Language Server Protocol, but nobody had the critical mass until Microsoft shoved it down everybody's throats. Until somebody puts a significant amount of money behind an alternative, Microsoft is going to continue to win this battle. (I was going to also say "or the OSS guys all unify behind a choice" but Hell will freeze over before that happens.)
  - owebmaster 1y ago
    > (I was going to also say "or the OSS guys all unify behind a choice" but Hell will freeze over before that happens.) The editor war is going as strong as ever, emacs vs vim will still be here in 20 years. Compared to 10 years ago, the amount of people using emacs and vim only grew, although VSCode growth was 1000x faster.
    - skydhash 1y ago
      I was watching the "Simple Made Easy" talk by Rick Hickey, and while he was talking more about programming languages, the talk could extend easily to editors and other type of tooling. People are always going for easy, not simple. Vim is very simple (a composable language for editing, straightforward integration with cli tools, easily extendable,...). Emacs is simple (Major mode that dictates main operations and display, minor modes for additional features, integrations between them can be described more as a complex web than a simple graph...). VS Code is easy (helpful suggestion for plugins, Familiar IDE-like interface, default setup, ready to hack on projects,...), but scratch that surface and the complexity appears (behemoth web engine, settings all over the place, app store like marketplace, extension are full blown software project,...). All the cons of IDE with none of the pros.
      - 1y ago
- j0e1 1y ago
  From my experience having attempted to migrate away from VSCodium (in the attempts to de-VSCode) and build atop Theia as a platform, there are few things to consider: - The build system is finicky and can easily take hours to figure/fix. - The error-reporting is severely lacking. You can be lost why something internal isn't working and go on a rabbit-trail with your favorite AI-copilot, etc. - Documentation is lacking. You have to dive into the platform code to actually figure things out. - This can be seen positively but there are quite a few new things being introduced regularly (especially AI-related) which, for a platform, isn't always ideal.
- sergiotapia 1y ago
  Why in earth would they stain their efforts with the "eclipse" name. Screenshots look great!
  - mdaniel 1y ago
    I in some sense empathize with you, in that Eclipse have a minor branding problem, a major discoverability problem for all of their projects of subprojects of projects to track the projects. That said, Eclipse the editor was all in on building a platform[1] upon which other people could build their own editors. It was quite popular before Electron arrived and sucked all the oxygen out of the rich text delivery space Eclipse the IDE also sat on their laurels and got their lunch eaten by JetBrains on the functionality front and VSCode on the extensible platform front 1: <https://wiki.eclipse.org/Rich_Client_Platform/ https://wiki.eclipse.org/Rich_Client_Platform/> or <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclipse_(software)#Rich_client_platform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclipse_(software)#Rich_client...>
  - exceptione 1y ago
    I have to somewhat defend Eclipse as the Java platform too. Twenty years ago people had hardly any RAM in their machines, and Eclipse definitely suffered for that, because without RAM you run into lots of disk i/o. The JRE was born in a time of scarce cpu power and low RAM capacities. It has put tremendous optimization pressure on the project. I develop on .net nowadays, but I have the utmost respect of what they pulled off. I dare you to install an Eclipse product these days. It will run circles around any Electron offering, while offering real parsers (not treesitter), and reliable code intelligence across vast source projects.
    - zdimension 1y ago
      > while offering real parsers (not treesitter) Honest question, what's wrong with treesitters?
      - exceptione 1y ago
        Very short answer: because a treesitter will do an approximately correct parsing, while a hand written parser will do a correct parsing (and if not, it is a bug). For a full, balanced overview, see: https://blog.jez.io/tree-sitter-limitations/ https://blog.jez.io/tree-sitter-limitations/
- blackoil 1y ago
  They use vscode extensions and the repository in discussion, so not sure how much derisking it is than vscodium .
- 0rzech 1y ago
  Each time I try to use Theia IDE I have such a bad experience: * On each start, Ada & SPARK extension pops up a dialog that I have to close by clicking 12 times (I counted it) on its "Cancel" button. * I can't permanently remove items from the left sidebar. It looks like Theia is unable to persist some things between runs. * The IDE notifies me about bad tasks.json config and proposes to open it to fix, but the "Open" button doesn't do anything. * Open VSX extensions do not update automatically. [1] I have to manually switch their versions to the newer ones. * Just now I've manually updated Ada & SPARK extension. Not only was I presented with several options with exactly the same version (perhaps each was meant for different CPU arch or operating system?), but after choosing the first one and reloading editor as the IDE asked me to, the extension disappeared completely. None of these happen with VSCodium, or with VS Code of course. [1] https://github.com/eclipse-theia/theia/issues/9295 https://github.com/eclipse-theia/theia/issues/9295
loloquwowndueo 1y ago
Remember vs code is designed to fracture and the forks are an integral part of that. https://ghuntley.com/fracture/ https://ghuntley.com/fracture/
- ghuntley 1y ago
  Thanks for the share. Yeah, building upon VSCode (MIT) is a stupid idea. Regarding OpenVSX, it was developed whilst I was at Gitpod and transferred to the Eclipse Foundation. It's been many years now, so my memory might be a little dated as to what came first, but OpenVSX/Gitpod/Thiea/Eclipse origins can all be traced back to https://www.typefox.io/ https://www.typefox.io/. Anyway. OpenVSX is classic XKCD https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/ territory—run by a small crew of brilliant volunteers, but the entire world depends/freeloads upon them.
  - aaronvg 1y ago
    it's kind of wild -- none of the multimillion dollar VSCode forks (Cursor, windsurf) are working properly at the moment. It seems open-vsx is quite a vulnerable single point of failure. Searching extensions gives a 503.
    - 0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago
      Is that any different from a GitHub/AWS outage?
      - nawgz 1y ago
        Yes - no one is making 7 figures in order to keep OpenVSX online
  - devsda 1y ago
    Couple of years ago, I think openvsx faced funding crunch and on the verge of the shutdown a dedicated working group was formed (including big names like Google, Salesforce etc) to support it. Not sure if this outage and its long duration is due to some technical difficulty or an indication of something worse.
rvz 1y ago
Looking forward to the post-mortem of this outage. #hugops
joshstrange 1y ago
I'm sure some (many?) will disagree with me but: VSCode is Android. Or rather, VSCode's source is AOSP and the marketplace, plugins, etc are Google Play Services. I say that with maximum derision.
- 38 1y ago
  as someone who has reversed the Google Play Services API, its utterly evil and you are correct that its about as far from open source as you can get
  - jillyboel 1y ago
    Can you please elaborate? Would love to hear more.
- ghuntley 1y ago
  you are correct. vscode (mit) is utterly evil - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43786380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43786380
- amadeuspagel 1y ago
  > VSCode is Android Yes, an open source project that creates immense value, but fails to fulfill some purist fantasy.
  - dizhn 1y ago
    Like have a working keyboard?
    - JLCarveth 1y ago
      My android phone doesn't have a working keyboard?
      - 3np 1y ago
        You use stock Android Open Source keyboard, not closed-sourced Gboard? Can you type in Chinese?
fr4nkr 1y ago
I noticed this the other day when I installed VSCodium on my new Windows box. I had a functional setup for one day, then the next day I couldn't install a language extension I direly needed. It's left a very sour taste in my mouth. I've used Emacs for ages and despite being a much more niche editor, it's never been so hard-dependent on centralized repositories, and the centralized repositories it does have (ELPA/MELPA) are apparently a lot more reliable than OpenVSX. Installing Emacs packages manually from source is a breeze, doing so with VSC is masochistic. VSC is not really "open source" in any meaningful sense. It is just plainly unusable if you don't do things the way Microsoft wants you to. I do respect the VSCodium devs for trying to make VSC more properly open, but it does feel like a futile effort.
- bogwog 1y ago
  For context, Open VSX is run by the Eclipse foundation, which also develops the Eclipse Theia editor, which is basically a clone of VS Code (not a fork, like VS Codium). The Open VSX registry is open source (https://github.com/eclipse/openvsx https://github.com/eclipse/openvsx) and self-hostable, although I have no experience with that. I assume it's possible to host your own instance with the extensions you want instead of relying on the free public instance. Personally I'm more of a Sublime guy, but people looking for an open VSC alternative should consider Theia over VSC forks. It seems like the smarter long term investment if you want to get out from Microsoft's control.
  - bobajeff 1y ago
    Even though I've heard of Theia Editor before I don't think I've ever seriously looked at it until now. It honestly looks like a good alternative to vscode. (It basically looks like a straight up clone, which is good for me) I'll definitely give it a try.
  - TiredOfLife 1y ago
    Theia is based on Microsoft Monaco editor. Its a fork with a different ui
    - 1y ago
throwaway42167 1y ago
Worth noting that you can configure VSCodium to use Microsoft's extension repo, and you can even trick extensions into thinking VSCodium is VSCode. It just can't be distributed that way out of the box for legal reasons.
- falcor84 1y ago
  Thanks, haven't tried it yet, but just found the relevant configuration settings described in the docs [0] and more detail on Stack Overflow [1]. [0] https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/prepare_vscode.sh#how-to-use-a-different-extension-gallery https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/prepare_vsc... [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44057402/using-extensions-in-compiled-vscode https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44057402/using-extension...
gchamonlive 1y ago
Now it's as good a time as ever to try out Lazy Vim. Came to it from Lunar Vim and it just works. Working with anything is a breeze. I'm just not too familiar with refactoring tooling and how to configure it, but there's rarely any reason for me to use something more complicated than sed, and in those occasions I can just use ast-grep.
- shiandow 1y ago
  Trying out emacs again after vsvode broke remote ssh for no apparent reason (other than their insane decision to install the whole text editor remotely). Tramps in emacs has some quirks (need to make connection timeouts faster somehow) but it just works.
  - gchamonlive 1y ago
    What I find nice about these terminal IDE's is that I can just deploy my config to my servers I access over ssh and it's the same experience as locally
deleted 1y ago
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Havoc 1y ago
This is why I've been learning neovim for the past couple weeks - the vscode reliance on Remote SSH extension felt like lock in
- NoboruWataya 1y ago
  Do you have a particular configuration or set of extensions you've been looking at? I mostly use JetBrains IDEs but have been trying to get a decent neovim setup as well. I followed some random tutorial and eventually got a decent setup working but it feels fragile and I'm not sure I could reproduce it if I had to. I am looking at AstroNvim now as a potentially more stable/reproducible setup.
  - skydhash 1y ago
    With editors like vim, neovim, emacs, it's way easier to get the lay of the land first (tutorial, play around with the default config,..) and then list out what you need. My vim config has three things only: LSP, FZF (for anything fuzzy), and Plug (to install the above two). There's also a few niceties, but I could do without them. or vendor them into the main config. But it's not my daily editor, so that's just the base config. Anything I could add on top of that would depend on the projects I would need it for. That's about 200 lines (the lsp config is 1/4 of that) NB. A nice talk even if it's about vim "How to Do 90% of What Plugins Do (With Just Vim)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA2WjJbmmoM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA2WjJbmmoM
- c-hendricks 1y ago
  There are a couple of options for Remote SSH with neovim: - https://github.com/chipsenkbeil/distant.nvim https://github.com/chipsenkbeil/distant.nvim - https://github.com/mikew/nvrh https://github.com/mikew/nvrh
Spunkie 1y ago
I'm partial to running Code - OSS and patching it with the aur/code-features and aur/code-marketplace.
john-h-k 1y ago
Lots of vim/emacs mentions so I feel obliged to mention Helix (https://helix-editor.com/ https://helix-editor.com/). Used neovim for _years_, tried Helix for a few weeks and never looked back
- notnmeyer 1y ago
  helix is so excellent.
- dodos 1y ago
  I love helix, I just wish more editors had support for its bindings so I'm not as out of water when I have to use an IDE.
  - john-h-k 1y ago
    Strongly agree. There's a new page on the site about helix-mode in other editors (although there are a limited number of entries): https://docs.helix-editor.com/master/other-software.html https://docs.helix-editor.com/master/other-software.html I myself have built zsh bindings for helix as that was my main pain point: https://github.com/john-h-k/helix-zsh https://github.com/john-h-k/helix-zsh
- rockyj 1y ago
  Really interested. Can you recommend a good tutorial, I tried searching but could not find anything which looked promising.
  - john-h-k 1y ago
    Try the helix tutor itself. Install, then do `hx --tutor` (binary is also called helix rather than hx on a few package managers).
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- myaccountonhn 1y ago
  And Kakoune, if you're looking for something you can easily extend yourself.
rnd0 1y ago
Basically we've seen this movie before -look at the trajectory OSX took. As far as I know, it's not really possible to build a useable pure darwin installable OS. Puredarwin itself is stuck in whatever was released in 2018 or earlier. Like Darwin, there may be an 'open' skeleton that vscode hangs upon, but all of the things that make it useful and attractive are being increasingly pulled behind paywalls. I'm pretty sure most of us saw this coming a mile away. I've played a little with VS Code here and there but never put a lot of time into it because I'd rather invest my time in things I know will be here in 2035 -like vim/neovim.
khimaros 1y ago
https://github.com/lapce/lapce https://github.com/lapce/lapce is an interesting contender in this space
mdaniel 1y ago
I happened to be poking around in their issues to see if there were mirrors and observed that in addition to the linked status page on this thread, the underlying Eclipse Foundation has their own (multiple) status tracking channels most relevant: https://www.eclipsestatus.io/incident/549796?mp=true https://www.eclipsestatus.io/incident/549796?mp=true their helpdesk ticket: https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipsefdn/helpdesk/-/issues/5924#note_3718741 https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipsefdn/helpdesk/-/issues/5924... the issue in their GitHub issue tracking for the site: https://github.com/EclipseFdn/open-vsx.org/issues/3805 https://github.com/EclipseFdn/open-vsx.org/issues/3805 the tl;dr seems to be a massive storage failure affecting a bunch of Eclipse services, and just like any storage problem putting all the bytes back is some "please wait"
Dwedit 1y ago
Yeah, the problem with centralized hosting is that the host can go down. Something like IPFS/IPNS could act as a decentralized backup plan.
jononor 1y ago
What are good, open source, alternatives to VS Code? That are modern IDEs with decent support for frontend, backend, data science, and embedded (possibly via extensions)? That mostly work out of the box, without having to set up and configure NN things.
- Matumio 1y ago
  They don't exist. If you want out-of-the-box, use Jetbrains and pay for it. If you want free-as-in-beer, VSCode proper. For free-as-in-speech you'll spend hours to learn/configure neovim/helix/emacs, or even hunting down free VSCodium plugins, I guess. I think working on out-of-the-box experience is not very attractive for volunteer contributors, so I guess the situation won't change unless we find a way to sponsor that work.
- dharmab 1y ago
  Zed is close, keep an eye on it when 1.0 comes out, probably later this year.
zoobab 1y ago
Use Torrent, not HTTP.
thomond 1y ago
Surely you can download the extension from a mirror and install it manually(ie the "old fashioned way")?
- mrWiz 1y ago
  Not legally.
jamisonbryant 1y ago
This right on the heels of the GitLab 17.11 release announcement [0] which mentioned that they added OpenVSX support to their Web IDE. One of the biggest blockers for my team to use the Web IDE/GitLab's equivalent of "Codespaces" was the lack of extensions support. As developers, we're spoiled for widespread (e.g.) vim keybindings support in just about any IDE via extensions. When unable to use it in something like Web IDE, it is very frustrating and makes it less useful as a product. [0]: https://about.gitlab.com/releases/2025/04/17/gitlab-17-11-released/ https://about.gitlab.com/releases/2025/04/17/gitlab-17-11-re...
- mdaniel 1y ago
  If I didn't hate GitLab's gitlab-org/gitlab issue tracker so much I'd go look to see if them offering OpenVSX registry was on the roadmap, because then an organization could mirror the .vsix into their GitLab instance and not suffer outages (in addition to the supply chain safety aspects) Also, I wonder how hard it would be to teach VSCodium/Theia to pull extensions from OCI because it seems to work great as a distribution mechanism for Homebrew and allows shipping a .vsix from your own GitHub/GitLab account, since both of those offer no-cost OCI image registries scoped to the project
0xbadcafebee 1y ago
Open Source projects used to all be hosted on hundreds of random mirrors. The hosting of which was free and donated, because it was just an HTTP/FTP/RSYNC directory on a file server in a closet in some corporation or university. Didn't even need to be reliable, as there were hundreds of mirrors. Linux distributions, and some very old projects, are still maintained this way. Nowadays you must have a flashy website. You must host everything on a single managed VCS provider, or a programming package ecosystem hoster. You must depend on corporations to give you free things, in exchange for you giving them everything about you (otherwise you must pay out of pocket for everything). You must do what everyone else does. Maybe it's impossible to go back to a simpler time. But it's not impossible to change the state of things today.
- hiatus 1y ago
  > Nowadays you must have a flashy website. You must host everything on a single managed VCS provider, or a programming package ecosystem hoster. You must depend on corporations to give you free things, in exchange for you giving them everything about you (otherwise you must pay out of pocket for everything). You must do what everyone else does. You keep saying _must_. Why _must_ you do what everyone else does? To what end? To get contributors to your project? To get funding? No one is stopping anyone from starting a project on sourceforge.
  - marpstar 1y ago
    I think GP was speaking tongue-in-cheek about the situation.
- campbel 1y ago
  This is the difference between open source to share useful code and open source to build leverage for a business.
wejick 1y ago
Dozens of AI powered IDE forked from VSCode impacted. Now is the right time for better managed openVSX, more collaborative efforts.

249 points by aaronvg 1y ago

There is not much to see on a server that is down, so let me share some free advice instead. Visit Eclipse Theia in the mean time when you are serious about de-risking from VSCode. I think VSCodium is doing an uphill battle here, while Microsoft can't help them self being a sales company first. In Theia, everything is open and free of spyware. MS is under no obligation to provide an OSS editor, but playing tricks after luring people in is not nice. EDIT: 1. Eclipse Theia is a different platform than Eclipse the Java IDE. 2. link: https://theia-ide.org/#theiaidedownload https://theia-ide.org/#theiaidedownload

mdaniel 1y ago
https://theia-ide.org/docs/user_install_vscode_extensions/#compatibility https://theia-ide.org/docs/user_install_vscode_extensions/#c... (sigh) > Please note that a few parts of the VS Code extension API are only stubbed in Theia. Extensions will be installable, but some features might not work as expected. Also, I thought Theia was a cloud IDE, and it seems like I was mostly right in that 2/3rds of their offering is (localhost:3000 & docker) but they also now apparently bundle it in Electron which I haven't tried
- exceptione 1y ago
  Note they say that most extensions are compatible, and those not listed as compatible might still be. The API surface covers almost 100% that of vscode, I only see some AI integration API's that are stubbed, and that is because Theia has their own vision here and doesn't want to depend on MS. The complete API compatibility list is here, the stubbed API's are not core imho: https://eclipse-theia.github.io/vscode-theia-comparator/status.html https://eclipse-theia.github.io/vscode-theia-comparator/stat...
imcritic 1y ago
Why would I switch from vscodium to theia?
- bangaladore 1y ago
  Theia is not a fork of vscode (even though it looks like it). It uses VSCode's code editor (Monoco) and is written from the ground up. Presumably allowing it to support extensions, that for example, vscode does not. However, its early days.
  - mappu 1y ago
    > However, its early days. Theia has been out for eight years now,
    - bangaladore 1y ago
      Came out of beta less then a year ago. What I mean is adoption is slow (if even there), so I'm sure there is quite a lot missing. But that's probably fine, Theia seems to be focused more on the current audience of Eclipse which is vendor tooling (chipmakers, FPGA, custom toolchains) rather than being an editor you are supposed to use by itself.
  - TiredOfLife 1y ago
    Theia is not a fork except all the parts that are.
    - bangaladore 1y ago
      What parts are forked? Genuinely curious. Based on my quick reading they are just using Monaco code editor. That is 100% freely licensed as MIT. Monaco is just the line based text editor.
  - imcritic 1y ago
    This doesn't answer my question in the slightest. What does it offer so nice that vscodium doesn't have and that would push me to switch to theia?
bsder 1y ago
> MS is under no obligation to provide an OSS editor, but playing tricks after luring people in is not nice. Microsoft is partly to blame, but people have been warning about this over and over and over ad nauseam and people still choose to use VSCode. You couldn't even get people to not use the proprietary extensions for C/C++, Python and remote development. The problem is that Microsoft dedicates enough resource to development that everybody else looks like a rounding error. For example, anybody could have produced the Language Server Protocol, but nobody had the critical mass until Microsoft shoved it down everybody's throats. Until somebody puts a significant amount of money behind an alternative, Microsoft is going to continue to win this battle. (I was going to also say "or the OSS guys all unify behind a choice" but Hell will freeze over before that happens.)
- owebmaster 1y ago
  > (I was going to also say "or the OSS guys all unify behind a choice" but Hell will freeze over before that happens.) The editor war is going as strong as ever, emacs vs vim will still be here in 20 years. Compared to 10 years ago, the amount of people using emacs and vim only grew, although VSCode growth was 1000x faster.
  - skydhash 1y ago
    I was watching the "Simple Made Easy" talk by Rick Hickey, and while he was talking more about programming languages, the talk could extend easily to editors and other type of tooling. People are always going for easy, not simple. Vim is very simple (a composable language for editing, straightforward integration with cli tools, easily extendable,...). Emacs is simple (Major mode that dictates main operations and display, minor modes for additional features, integrations between them can be described more as a complex web than a simple graph...). VS Code is easy (helpful suggestion for plugins, Familiar IDE-like interface, default setup, ready to hack on projects,...), but scratch that surface and the complexity appears (behemoth web engine, settings all over the place, app store like marketplace, extension are full blown software project,...). All the cons of IDE with none of the pros.
    - 1y ago
j0e1 1y ago
From my experience having attempted to migrate away from VSCodium (in the attempts to de-VSCode) and build atop Theia as a platform, there are few things to consider: - The build system is finicky and can easily take hours to figure/fix. - The error-reporting is severely lacking. You can be lost why something internal isn't working and go on a rabbit-trail with your favorite AI-copilot, etc. - Documentation is lacking. You have to dive into the platform code to actually figure things out. - This can be seen positively but there are quite a few new things being introduced regularly (especially AI-related) which, for a platform, isn't always ideal.
sergiotapia 1y ago
Why in earth would they stain their efforts with the "eclipse" name. Screenshots look great!
- mdaniel 1y ago
  I in some sense empathize with you, in that Eclipse have a minor branding problem, a major discoverability problem for all of their projects of subprojects of projects to track the projects. That said, Eclipse the editor was all in on building a platform[1] upon which other people could build their own editors. It was quite popular before Electron arrived and sucked all the oxygen out of the rich text delivery space Eclipse the IDE also sat on their laurels and got their lunch eaten by JetBrains on the functionality front and VSCode on the extensible platform front 1: <https://wiki.eclipse.org/Rich_Client_Platform/ https://wiki.eclipse.org/Rich_Client_Platform/> or <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclipse_(software)#Rich_client_platform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclipse_(software)#Rich_client...>
- exceptione 1y ago
  I have to somewhat defend Eclipse as the Java platform too. Twenty years ago people had hardly any RAM in their machines, and Eclipse definitely suffered for that, because without RAM you run into lots of disk i/o. The JRE was born in a time of scarce cpu power and low RAM capacities. It has put tremendous optimization pressure on the project. I develop on .net nowadays, but I have the utmost respect of what they pulled off. I dare you to install an Eclipse product these days. It will run circles around any Electron offering, while offering real parsers (not treesitter), and reliable code intelligence across vast source projects.
  - zdimension 1y ago
    > while offering real parsers (not treesitter) Honest question, what's wrong with treesitters?
    - exceptione 1y ago
      Very short answer: because a treesitter will do an approximately correct parsing, while a hand written parser will do a correct parsing (and if not, it is a bug). For a full, balanced overview, see: https://blog.jez.io/tree-sitter-limitations/ https://blog.jez.io/tree-sitter-limitations/
blackoil 1y ago
They use vscode extensions and the repository in discussion, so not sure how much derisking it is than vscodium .
0rzech 1y ago
Each time I try to use Theia IDE I have such a bad experience: * On each start, Ada & SPARK extension pops up a dialog that I have to close by clicking 12 times (I counted it) on its "Cancel" button. * I can't permanently remove items from the left sidebar. It looks like Theia is unable to persist some things between runs. * The IDE notifies me about bad tasks.json config and proposes to open it to fix, but the "Open" button doesn't do anything. * Open VSX extensions do not update automatically. [1] I have to manually switch their versions to the newer ones. * Just now I've manually updated Ada & SPARK extension. Not only was I presented with several options with exactly the same version (perhaps each was meant for different CPU arch or operating system?), but after choosing the first one and reloading editor as the IDE asked me to, the extension disappeared completely. None of these happen with VSCodium, or with VS Code of course. [1] https://github.com/eclipse-theia/theia/issues/9295 https://github.com/eclipse-theia/theia/issues/9295

loloquwowndueo 1y ago

Remember vs code is designed to fracture and the forks are an integral part of that. https://ghuntley.com/fracture/ https://ghuntley.com/fracture/

ghuntley 1y ago
Thanks for the share. Yeah, building upon VSCode (MIT) is a stupid idea. Regarding OpenVSX, it was developed whilst I was at Gitpod and transferred to the Eclipse Foundation. It's been many years now, so my memory might be a little dated as to what came first, but OpenVSX/Gitpod/Thiea/Eclipse origins can all be traced back to https://www.typefox.io/ https://www.typefox.io/. Anyway. OpenVSX is classic XKCD https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/ territory—run by a small crew of brilliant volunteers, but the entire world depends/freeloads upon them.
- aaronvg 1y ago
  it's kind of wild -- none of the multimillion dollar VSCode forks (Cursor, windsurf) are working properly at the moment. It seems open-vsx is quite a vulnerable single point of failure. Searching extensions gives a 503.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago
    Is that any different from a GitHub/AWS outage?
    - nawgz 1y ago
      Yes - no one is making 7 figures in order to keep OpenVSX online
- devsda 1y ago
  Couple of years ago, I think openvsx faced funding crunch and on the verge of the shutdown a dedicated working group was formed (including big names like Google, Salesforce etc) to support it. Not sure if this outage and its long duration is due to some technical difficulty or an indication of something worse.

rvz 1y ago

Looking forward to the post-mortem of this outage. #hugops

joshstrange 1y ago

I'm sure some (many?) will disagree with me but: VSCode is Android. Or rather, VSCode's source is AOSP and the marketplace, plugins, etc are Google Play Services. I say that with maximum derision.

38 1y ago
as someone who has reversed the Google Play Services API, its utterly evil and you are correct that its about as far from open source as you can get
- jillyboel 1y ago
  Can you please elaborate? Would love to hear more.
ghuntley 1y ago
you are correct. vscode (mit) is utterly evil - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43786380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43786380
amadeuspagel 1y ago
> VSCode is Android Yes, an open source project that creates immense value, but fails to fulfill some purist fantasy.
- dizhn 1y ago
  Like have a working keyboard?
  - JLCarveth 1y ago
    My android phone doesn't have a working keyboard?
    - 3np 1y ago
      You use stock Android Open Source keyboard, not closed-sourced Gboard? Can you type in Chinese?

fr4nkr 1y ago

I noticed this the other day when I installed VSCodium on my new Windows box. I had a functional setup for one day, then the next day I couldn't install a language extension I direly needed. It's left a very sour taste in my mouth. I've used Emacs for ages and despite being a much more niche editor, it's never been so hard-dependent on centralized repositories, and the centralized repositories it does have (ELPA/MELPA) are apparently a lot more reliable than OpenVSX. Installing Emacs packages manually from source is a breeze, doing so with VSC is masochistic. VSC is not really "open source" in any meaningful sense. It is just plainly unusable if you don't do things the way Microsoft wants you to. I do respect the VSCodium devs for trying to make VSC more properly open, but it does feel like a futile effort.

bogwog 1y ago
For context, Open VSX is run by the Eclipse foundation, which also develops the Eclipse Theia editor, which is basically a clone of VS Code (not a fork, like VS Codium). The Open VSX registry is open source (https://github.com/eclipse/openvsx https://github.com/eclipse/openvsx) and self-hostable, although I have no experience with that. I assume it's possible to host your own instance with the extensions you want instead of relying on the free public instance. Personally I'm more of a Sublime guy, but people looking for an open VSC alternative should consider Theia over VSC forks. It seems like the smarter long term investment if you want to get out from Microsoft's control.
- bobajeff 1y ago
  Even though I've heard of Theia Editor before I don't think I've ever seriously looked at it until now. It honestly looks like a good alternative to vscode. (It basically looks like a straight up clone, which is good for me) I'll definitely give it a try.
- TiredOfLife 1y ago
  Theia is based on Microsoft Monaco editor. Its a fork with a different ui
  - 1y ago

throwaway42167 1y ago

Worth noting that you can configure VSCodium to use Microsoft's extension repo, and you can even trick extensions into thinking VSCodium is VSCode. It just can't be distributed that way out of the box for legal reasons.

falcor84 1y ago
Thanks, haven't tried it yet, but just found the relevant configuration settings described in the docs [0] and more detail on Stack Overflow [1]. [0] https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/prepare_vscode.sh#how-to-use-a-different-extension-gallery https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/prepare_vsc... [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44057402/using-extensions-in-compiled-vscode https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44057402/using-extension...

gchamonlive 1y ago

Now it's as good a time as ever to try out Lazy Vim. Came to it from Lunar Vim and it just works. Working with anything is a breeze. I'm just not too familiar with refactoring tooling and how to configure it, but there's rarely any reason for me to use something more complicated than sed, and in those occasions I can just use ast-grep.

shiandow 1y ago
Trying out emacs again after vsvode broke remote ssh for no apparent reason (other than their insane decision to install the whole text editor remotely). Tramps in emacs has some quirks (need to make connection timeouts faster somehow) but it just works.
- gchamonlive 1y ago
  What I find nice about these terminal IDE's is that I can just deploy my config to my servers I access over ssh and it's the same experience as locally

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Havoc 1y ago

This is why I've been learning neovim for the past couple weeks - the vscode reliance on Remote SSH extension felt like lock in

NoboruWataya 1y ago
Do you have a particular configuration or set of extensions you've been looking at? I mostly use JetBrains IDEs but have been trying to get a decent neovim setup as well. I followed some random tutorial and eventually got a decent setup working but it feels fragile and I'm not sure I could reproduce it if I had to. I am looking at AstroNvim now as a potentially more stable/reproducible setup.
- skydhash 1y ago
  With editors like vim, neovim, emacs, it's way easier to get the lay of the land first (tutorial, play around with the default config,..) and then list out what you need. My vim config has three things only: LSP, FZF (for anything fuzzy), and Plug (to install the above two). There's also a few niceties, but I could do without them. or vendor them into the main config. But it's not my daily editor, so that's just the base config. Anything I could add on top of that would depend on the projects I would need it for. That's about 200 lines (the lsp config is 1/4 of that) NB. A nice talk even if it's about vim "How to Do 90% of What Plugins Do (With Just Vim)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA2WjJbmmoM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA2WjJbmmoM
c-hendricks 1y ago
There are a couple of options for Remote SSH with neovim: - https://github.com/chipsenkbeil/distant.nvim https://github.com/chipsenkbeil/distant.nvim - https://github.com/mikew/nvrh https://github.com/mikew/nvrh

Spunkie 1y ago

I'm partial to running Code - OSS and patching it with the aur/code-features and aur/code-marketplace.

john-h-k 1y ago

Lots of vim/emacs mentions so I feel obliged to mention Helix (https://helix-editor.com/ https://helix-editor.com/). Used neovim for _years_, tried Helix for a few weeks and never looked back

notnmeyer 1y ago
helix is so excellent.
dodos 1y ago
I love helix, I just wish more editors had support for its bindings so I'm not as out of water when I have to use an IDE.
- john-h-k 1y ago
  Strongly agree. There's a new page on the site about helix-mode in other editors (although there are a limited number of entries): https://docs.helix-editor.com/master/other-software.html https://docs.helix-editor.com/master/other-software.html I myself have built zsh bindings for helix as that was my main pain point: https://github.com/john-h-k/helix-zsh https://github.com/john-h-k/helix-zsh
rockyj 1y ago
Really interested. Can you recommend a good tutorial, I tried searching but could not find anything which looked promising.
- john-h-k 1y ago
  Try the helix tutor itself. Install, then do `hx --tutor` (binary is also called helix rather than hx on a few package managers).
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myaccountonhn 1y ago
And Kakoune, if you're looking for something you can easily extend yourself.

rnd0 1y ago

Basically we've seen this movie before -look at the trajectory OSX took. As far as I know, it's not really possible to build a useable pure darwin installable OS. Puredarwin itself is stuck in whatever was released in 2018 or earlier. Like Darwin, there may be an 'open' skeleton that vscode hangs upon, but all of the things that make it useful and attractive are being increasingly pulled behind paywalls. I'm pretty sure most of us saw this coming a mile away. I've played a little with VS Code here and there but never put a lot of time into it because I'd rather invest my time in things I know will be here in 2035 -like vim/neovim.

khimaros 1y ago

https://github.com/lapce/lapce https://github.com/lapce/lapce is an interesting contender in this space

mdaniel 1y ago

I happened to be poking around in their issues to see if there were mirrors and observed that in addition to the linked status page on this thread, the underlying Eclipse Foundation has their own (multiple) status tracking channels most relevant: https://www.eclipsestatus.io/incident/549796?mp=true https://www.eclipsestatus.io/incident/549796?mp=true their helpdesk ticket: https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipsefdn/helpdesk/-/issues/5924#note_3718741 https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipsefdn/helpdesk/-/issues/5924... the issue in their GitHub issue tracking for the site: https://github.com/EclipseFdn/open-vsx.org/issues/3805 https://github.com/EclipseFdn/open-vsx.org/issues/3805 the tl;dr seems to be a massive storage failure affecting a bunch of Eclipse services, and just like any storage problem putting all the bytes back is some "please wait"

Dwedit 1y ago

Yeah, the problem with centralized hosting is that the host can go down. Something like IPFS/IPNS could act as a decentralized backup plan.

jononor 1y ago

What are good, open source, alternatives to VS Code? That are modern IDEs with decent support for frontend, backend, data science, and embedded (possibly via extensions)? That mostly work out of the box, without having to set up and configure NN things.

Matumio 1y ago
They don't exist. If you want out-of-the-box, use Jetbrains and pay for it. If you want free-as-in-beer, VSCode proper. For free-as-in-speech you'll spend hours to learn/configure neovim/helix/emacs, or even hunting down free VSCodium plugins, I guess. I think working on out-of-the-box experience is not very attractive for volunteer contributors, so I guess the situation won't change unless we find a way to sponsor that work.
dharmab 1y ago
Zed is close, keep an eye on it when 1.0 comes out, probably later this year.

zoobab 1y ago

Use Torrent, not HTTP.

thomond 1y ago

Surely you can download the extension from a mirror and install it manually(ie the "old fashioned way")?

mrWiz 1y ago
Not legally.

jamisonbryant 1y ago

This right on the heels of the GitLab 17.11 release announcement [0] which mentioned that they added OpenVSX support to their Web IDE. One of the biggest blockers for my team to use the Web IDE/GitLab's equivalent of "Codespaces" was the lack of extensions support. As developers, we're spoiled for widespread (e.g.) vim keybindings support in just about any IDE via extensions. When unable to use it in something like Web IDE, it is very frustrating and makes it less useful as a product. [0]: https://about.gitlab.com/releases/2025/04/17/gitlab-17-11-released/ https://about.gitlab.com/releases/2025/04/17/gitlab-17-11-re...

mdaniel 1y ago
If I didn't hate GitLab's gitlab-org/gitlab issue tracker so much I'd go look to see if them offering OpenVSX registry was on the roadmap, because then an organization could mirror the .vsix into their GitLab instance and not suffer outages (in addition to the supply chain safety aspects) Also, I wonder how hard it would be to teach VSCodium/Theia to pull extensions from OCI because it seems to work great as a distribution mechanism for Homebrew and allows shipping a .vsix from your own GitHub/GitLab account, since both of those offer no-cost OCI image registries scoped to the project

0xbadcafebee 1y ago

Open Source projects used to all be hosted on hundreds of random mirrors. The hosting of which was free and donated, because it was just an HTTP/FTP/RSYNC directory on a file server in a closet in some corporation or university. Didn't even need to be reliable, as there were hundreds of mirrors. Linux distributions, and some very old projects, are still maintained this way. Nowadays you must have a flashy website. You must host everything on a single managed VCS provider, or a programming package ecosystem hoster. You must depend on corporations to give you free things, in exchange for you giving them everything about you (otherwise you must pay out of pocket for everything). You must do what everyone else does. Maybe it's impossible to go back to a simpler time. But it's not impossible to change the state of things today.

hiatus 1y ago
> Nowadays you must have a flashy website. You must host everything on a single managed VCS provider, or a programming package ecosystem hoster. You must depend on corporations to give you free things, in exchange for you giving them everything about you (otherwise you must pay out of pocket for everything). You must do what everyone else does. You keep saying _must_. Why _must_ you do what everyone else does? To what end? To get contributors to your project? To get funding? No one is stopping anyone from starting a project on sourceforge.
- marpstar 1y ago
  I think GP was speaking tongue-in-cheek about the situation.
campbel 1y ago
This is the difference between open source to share useful code and open source to build leverage for a business.

wejick 1y ago

Dozens of AI powered IDE forked from VSCode impacted. Now is the right time for better managed openVSX, more collaborative efforts.