Building images with preinstalled extensions

[flxs]

I'd like to build custom docker images based on this project with a number of extensions preinstalled during the image build process, e.g. for reproducible, versioned throwaway dev setups. It doesn't seem to be possible to do this using code --install-extension, as that crashes with Missing VSCODE_IPC_HOOK_CLI.

[badp]

Seconded, we're currently shipping Eclipse Theia as part of our development environment docker images with a list of plugins as described here so our users don't have to install pyright etc. themselves. However, Theia doesn't ship with an extension store for users to fiddle with (= install, uninstall, upgrade) extensions and that would be a nice feature to add to our offering. (We also have no interest in writing our own Theia extensions.)

[michaellilltokiwa]

Possible workaround is to extract the vsix to the extensions directory directly like so:

FROM gitpod/openvscode-server:latest
USER root

RUN apt-get update && apt-get -y install zip
COPY fuzion-lang-0.1.0.vsix /home/
RUN mkdir /home/openvscode-server-v1.60.2-linux-x64/extensions/fuzion/
RUN unzip /home/fuzion-lang-0.1.0.vsix "extension/*" -d /home/openvscode-server-v1.60.2-linux-x64/extensions/fuzion/

USER openvscode-server

[andymac4182]

We are looking at rolling this out as some workstations for some of our team. This would be a massive help.

I am curious how this would work mixing extensions installed in docker vs ones that are updated or installed into the workspace.

[oldirtybasti]

I copy them to the workspace to get rid of any version number dependencies. There also is a tool called lastversion, which gets up to date version numbers from github:

RUN export EXTENSION=redhat.java-$(lastversion microsoft/vscode-java-test) && \
    lastversion --assets microsoft/vscode-java-test -d /home/workspace/.opencode-server/extensions/$EXTENSION.vsix && \
    mkdir -p /home/workspace/.opencode-server/extensions/$EXTENSION && unzip /home/workspace/.opencode-server/extensions/$EXTENSION.vsix -d /home/workspace/.opencode-server/extensions/$EXTENSION && mv /home/workspace/.opencode-server/extensions/$EXTENSION/extension/* /home/workspace/.opencode-server/extensions/$EXTENSION

For tools not releasing their vsix via github, I copy them directly from the build environment.

[deviantony]

Allright so I've been fighting with this for a bit of time.

@michaellilltokiwa 's example did not work for me.

I went with @oldirtybasti's suggestion, without using lastversion and finally settled on the following solution to install extensions at build time:

# First, you'll need to retrieve the unique identifier associated to the extension
# It can be found on VSCode extension marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-python.python
# The unique identifier for this extension is: ms-python.python

# A unique identifier is usually defined using the following format PUBLISHER.PACKAGE

# Just update the EXT_PUBLISHER and EXT_PACKAGE environment variables appropriately.

## Python extension ID: ms-python.python
RUN EXT_PUBLISHER=ms-python EXT_PACKAGE=python && \
    mkdir -pv "/home/workspace/.openvscode-server/extensions/${EXT_PUBLISHER}.${EXT_PACKAGE}" && \
    curl -sSL "https://${EXT_PUBLISHER}.gallery.vsassets.io/_apis/public/gallery/publisher/${EXT_PUBLISHER}/extension/${EXT_PACKAGE}/latest/assetbyname/Microsoft.VisualStudio.Services.VSIXPackage" | bsdtar xvf - --strip-components=1 -C "/home/workspace/.openvscode-server/extensions/${EXT_PUBLISHER}.${EXT_PACKAGE}"

Make sure that you have both curl and bsdtar binaries available in your image for the commands above to work.

This will install the latest version of the extension of your choice.

EDIT: The code --install-extension CLI approach would be the best indeed but I'm not sure if that's going to be possible as I think we'd need to have the VSCode server running first before you could use it to install extensions.

[akosyakov]

When you start a server with server.sh you can pass --install-extension or --install-builtin-extension.