Nixpkgs: Build VSCode from Source

[Profpatsch]

VSCode is currently packaged with binaries from Microsoft. Those are non-free.
The source code is under MIT license.

It might be necessary to build Electron from Source first, see https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/17073

[gebner]

I managed to build vscode from source with the electron build from nixpkgs (so we don't need to change the electron build).

• You need a patched version of node-native-keymap, I have submitted a PR
• Then you just need to replace the electron binary with ours (after building vscode):

nix-build '<nixpkgs>' -A electron -o nixpkgs-electron
ln -sf nixpkgs-electron/lib/electron/electron .build/electron/code-oss

vscode has a wrapper around npm and also downloads packages during the build. I haven't yet figured out how to integrate that with our node.js infrastructure.

[Profpatsch]

@gebner does this mean we have a from-source build that is MIT now?

[gebner]

Not that I know of. I just managed to build vscode from source at all.

[offlinehacker]

Implemented here: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/86122

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[gebner]

There is already a PR, but it still needs a bit of clean up.