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Distinguish installs from updates in download counts
Hi,
currently, an extension like JBang shows 1.2k installs. While it gets 300+ installs on the VS Code marketplace (and 1400+ updates). Could the open-vsx API return different values for (unique) installs and updates?
@fbricon The installs figure on open-vsx.org is the vscode marketplace figure, https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=jbangdev.jbang-vscode. The downloads figure on open-vsx.org, in this case 1.3K, are the downloads we track from open-vsx.org. I believe the download count is just downloads from the extension details page and not file accesses via /api/{namespace}/{extension}/{version}/file/**. Does this answer your question?
@amvanbaren Can you confirm?
The installs badge is part of the jbangdev.jbang-vscode README file, not all extensions show this badge, e.g. rust-analyzer.
Open VSX only tracks downloads. The downloads are imported from Azure Blob Storage. There's no distinction between the webui and API.
I actually don't know how IDEs download the updates. But if they were appending a flag like ?update=true to the download query, would it be possible for open-vsx to handle (count) that?
@fbricon If that were the case, then it would be possible for open-vsx to count it. Especially if the flag can be passed on to Azure Blob Storage, but it could be done in other ways too.
~~Maybe you can check how VS Code or VSCodium check for extension updates? You can see the web requests it makes by opening the developer tools (Help > Toggle developer tools).~~
I just realized that open-vsx is also used by other non-VSCode apps such as Theia or to load dependencies in CI jobs. I think that for this reason it will be quite the challenge to reliably distinguish between installs and updates.
@kineticsquid Do you know which apps, frameworks or platforms use open-vsx?
@amvanbaren Anecdotally, Theia based IDEs, VS Codium users, a 'fork' of Theia called SmartIDE. I was hoping the additional activity metrics in the /admin/report would also shed light on use.
@kineticsquid
I was hoping the additional activity metrics in the /admin/report would also shed light on use.
No, Open VSX does not track which IDE/app uses the platform.