VSCodium

Free/Libre Open Source Software Binaries of VSCode

Table of Contents

• Download/Install
  • Install with Brew
• Why Does This Exist
• Getting all the Telemetry Out
• Supported OS
• Extensions + Marketplace
• Migrating from Visual Studio Code to VSCodium

Download/Install

🎉 🎉 Download latest release here 🎉 🎉

Install with Brew

If you are on a Mac and have Homebrew installed:

brew cask install vscodium

Note: if you see "App can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer" when opening VSCodium the first time, you can right-click the application and choose Open. This should only be required the first time opening on a Mac.

Why Does This Exist

This repository contains a build file to generate FLOSS release binaries of Microsoft's VSCode.

Microsoft's downloads of Visual Studio Code are licensed under this not-FLOSS license and contain telemetry/tracking. According to this comment from a Visual Studio Code maintainer:

When we [Microsoft] build Visual Studio Code, we do exactly this. We clone the vscode repository, we lay down a customized product.json that has Microsoft specific functionality (telemetry, gallery, logo, etc.), and then produce a build that we release under our license.

When you clone and build from the vscode repo, none of these endpoints are configured in the default product.json. Therefore, you generate a "clean" build, without the Microsoft customizations, which is by default licensed under the MIT license

This repo exists so that you don't have to download+build from source. The build scripts in this repo clone Microsoft's vscode repo, run the build commands, and upload the resulting binaries to GitHub releases. These binaries are licensed under the MIT license. Telemetry is enabled by a build flag which we do not pass.

If you want to build from source yourself, head over to Microsoft's vscode repo and follow their instructions. This repo exists to make it easier to get the latest version of MIT-licensed VSCode.

Microsoft's build process does download additional files. This was brought up in Microsoft/vscode#49159 and Microsoft/vscode#45978. These are the packages downloaded during build:

• Extensions from the Microsoft Marketplace:
  • ms-vscode.node-debug2
  • ms-vscode.node-debug
• From Electron releases (using gulp-atom-electron)
  • electron
  • ffmpeg

Getting all the Telemetry Out

Even though we do not pass the telemetry build flags (and go out of our way to cripple the baked-in telemetry), Microsoft will still track usage by default. After installing VSCodium, you must manually disable telemetry in your settings file to stop it from sending tracking data to Microsoft.

The instructions here and here help with disabling telemetry.

It is also highly recommended that you review all the settings that "use online services" by following these instructions. The @tag:usesOnlineServices filter on the settings page will show that by default:

• Extensions auto check for updates and auto install updates
• Searches within the app are sent to an online service for "natural language processing"
• Updates to the app are fetched in the background

These can all be disabled.

Please note that some extensions send telemetry data to Microsoft as well. We have no control over this and can only recommend removing the extension.

(For example the C# extension ms-vscode.csharp sends tracking data to Microsoft.)

Supported OS

• OSX x64 (zipped app file)
• Linux x64 (.deb, .rpm, and .tar.gz files)
• Linux x86 (.deb, .rpm, and .tar.gz files)
• Windows
  • The plan is to build the Windows executable with AppVeyor. PRs are welcome 💙

The ARM architecture is not currently supported. If you know of a way to do this with Travis or any other free CI/CD platform please put in an issue or a PR.

Extensions + Marketplace

Until something more open comes around, we use the Microsoft Marketplace/Extensions in the product.json file. Those links are licensed under MIT as per the comments on this issue.

Migrating from Visual Studio Code to VSCodium

VSCodium (and a freshly cloned copy of vscode built from source) stores its extension files in ~/.vscode-oss. So if you currently have Visual Studio Code installed, your extensions won't automatically populate. You can reinstall your extensions from the Marketplace in VSCodium, or copy the extensions from ~/.vscode/extensions to ~/.vscode-oss/extensions.

Visual Studio Code stores its keybindings.json and settings.json file in the these locations:

• Windows: %APPDATA%\Code\User
• macOS: $HOME/Library/Application Support/Code/User
• Linux: $HOME/.config/Code/User

You can copy these files to the VSCodium user settings folder:

• Windows: %APPDATA%\VSCodium\User
• macOS: $HOME/Library/Application Support/VSCodium/User
• Linux: $HOME/.config/VSCodium/User

To copy your settings manually:

• In Visual Studio Code, go to Settings (Command+, if on a Mac)
• Click the three dots ... and choose 'Open settings.json'
• Copy the contents of settings.json into the same place in VSCodium

License

MIT