Epic: Self Host Open VSX (Airgapped)

[loujaybee]

We are currently investigating the possibility to self host the infrastructure for Open VSX within Gitpod.

This is first and foremost to improve reliability of SaaS Gitpod users, however the component could also be leveraged and used as part of the Gitpod self-hosted offering in future.

Some potential use-cases:

1. Full airgap support - A fully offline VS Code within a corporate airgapped network without public internet access or the main Open VSX repository.
2. Internal, private extensions not on the public internet - Publish extensions to your own private registry, and not to the public Open VSX or Microsoft marketplace.
3. Improved reliability - Resiliency from Open VSX infrastructure outages, provide an Active/Passive type of failover to ensure operational continuity.
4. Fine-grained authorisation and access controls - e.g. only certain users can access certain extensions)
5. Moderating Open VSX extension content - For example blocking or preventing certain extensions that have security vulnerabilities or UX issues.

Related links:

1. Deploying Open VSX GitHub Wiki
2. Open VSX Swagger / OpenAPI
3. Deploying Open VSX in a corporate friendly way (YouTube)

#airgapped #airgap