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The VS Code Flatpak is useless

bentsukun.ch

11–17 of 17 posts

Re: The VS Code Flatpak is useless

#11
It's indeed an inconvenience with developing with Flatpak, but assuming someone still wants to do it, here's what one can do to make it practical (as far as it can be):

Get your development tools as a flatpak runtime extensions

Try to do everything inside the flatpak'ed tool (so e.g. with VSCode, use the terminal built in it, rather than a separate one)

If you need some tooling from the host, you can bind-mount them in. Just note that they probably have to be somewhere outside /usr because that's where Flatpak mounts its usual runtime

Re: The VS Code Flatpak is useless

#12
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't even read the article. Did you? How vscodium solves the problem of author?

> Ultimately, it comes down to this: Flatpaks run isolated from the host OS, which is fundamentally incompatible with developing code in an IDE. I consider vscodium to solve that problem by integrating with the operating system. https://vscodium.com/#use-a-package-manager-deb-rpm-provided...

VSCode provides packages too. The problem is the OS defaulting to a flatpak.

Re: The VS Code Flatpak is useless

#13
post #8

Most tools that benefit from your current environment are lacking in flatpak. Basically any IDE is going to feel awful without the proper tools. I can't run c++ in CLion without the proper tools, and good luck installing them.

Developer setups are the foremost use case for toolbox (atomic Fedora) or distrobox [0].

Dev toolchains are infamous for pulling a ton of stuff into your system, and certain languages make switching versions a pain as well. So you install your IDE and whatever flavour of the month tools you need in a distrobox container, using regular dnf packages, and keep your base system clean. With distrobox you can give those tools a separate $HOME as well, in case they litter your main one with dotfiles and dotfolders.

If you work on a certain project long-term, you can then clone the distrobox and keep it around as-is, to ensure against breaking changes in some of your tools.

[0] https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox

Re: The VS Code Flatpak is useless

#14

If I need VS Code, I reach for VSCodium. https://vscodium.com/

Is there a complete listing somewhere of exactly what’s different between the two, both in terms of features and end-to-end experience?

The core program is exactly the same, built from the same source code, using the same build script, just with different default settings and configs (mainly turning off all telemetry and changing the branding).

The big difference is when it comes to extensions. VSCodium does not have access to the official Microsoft extension marketplace or any of the closed source Microsoft extensions. Most Open Source and third party extensions are available, but a few will be missing, with the biggest one probably being the Remote Development tools.

Re: The VS Code Flatpak is useless

#15
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ultimately, it comes down to this: Flatpaks run isolated from the host OS, which is fundamentally incompatible with developing code in an IDE. I consider vscodium to solve that problem by integrating with the operating system. https://vscodium.com/#use-a-package-manager-deb-rpm-provided...

VSCode provides packages too. The problem is the OS defaulting to a flatpak.

I credited the article's author with being able to summarize their problem.

Since Fedora 39 does not default to a flatpak in the case of VScodium, it also solves the problem you describe.

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