Outdated VS Code built-in extensions published in openvsx breaks gitpod, openvscode-server, vscodium, etc

[jeanp413]

Since version 1.66.x vscode added a feature to auto update built-in extensions (https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/68410).

The problem with open-vsx is that it has this built-in extension published (used by theia https://github.com/eclipse-theia/vscode-builtin-extensions) and also are outdated, so when this auto-update feature triggers the built-in extensions are replaced by this outdated extensions breaking a lot of features like github auth, jupyter notebooks, etc.

VS Code not affected as MS marketplace does not publish built-in extensions.

Opening this to look into options how to fix this cc @akosyakov

[daiyam]

@jeanp413 Thanks for the explanation.

Yesterday, there was the commit https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/commit/7e3c3e6e42fc0abaccc89ba84e40e36b8ccab5b9 which should fix the issue.

[jeanp413]

@daiyam yeah saw that too but that only affects stable releases, gitpod and openvscode-server has insiders versions too

[daiyam]

So the best would be to able to make a PR in vscode to add a flag in the product.json to disable the update of built-in extensions.

[jeanp413]

mmm maybe, the thing is there's two kinds of built-in extensions the ones inside the vscode repo which are not published to the marketplace and the ones that are downloaded when building the final release and are published to marketplace, these ones should auto update also there's --install-builtin-extension command line argument I guess this ones should auto update too. Not sure if there's a way in the code to differentiate them ...

[daiyam]

Based on the commit, the builtin extensions have the type ExtensionType.System.

[jeanp413]

After talking with @amvanbaren and @akosyakov we'll exclude this extensions (in the vscode namespace) in the /vscode endpoints so we don't break theia users

[daiyam]

@jeanp413 Can you clarify what you are going to do? Thx

[jeanp413]

@daiyam Aart will make a PR filtering extensions in the vscode namespace i.e. having an id of this form vscode.* (which is only used by vscode built-in extensions) from the request response of all the openvsx vscode enpoints which are configured in the vscode product.json, correct me if I'm wrong @amvanbaren

[daiyam]

@jeanp413 Yep, you are right. It should fix the issue for all vscode-based editors. Thx Do you have a timeline for the fix?

[daiyam]

@jeanp413 Do you think that your fix will be available before the next release of vscode?

[jeanp413]

Depends on Aart's schedule, @amvanbaren will you be able to work on this issue this week?

[amvanbaren]

Release 19286bf has some issues on the staging server. My main focus this week is to get the release to production. I can work on this issue in between testing and debugging. The fix itself is pretty straightforward.