Vscodium: Cannot use Remote Development extension pack

[qlan3]

Describe the bug
I cannot use Remote Development extension pack.

Please confirm that this problem is VSCodium-specific

• [x] This bug doesn't happen if I use Microsoft's Visual Studio Code. It only happens in VSCodium.

Please confirm that the issue/resolution isn't already documented

• [x] I checked the Docs page and my issue is not mentioned there.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Install Remote Development extension pack.
2. Press F1 and execute "Remote-SSH: Open configuration file" command.
3. See error "command 'opensshremotes.openConfigFile' not found" at the bottom right.

Expected behavior
The configuration file is open.

Screenshots
If applicable, add screenshots to help explain your problem.

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: Mac OS
• Architecture x64
• Version 1.35.0

[stripedpajamas]

I expect this is not working for very similar reasons as #128 -- the functionality is still considered a "proposal". As such, MS lists the allowed proposals in the product.json file pre-build. Their current list (1.35.0) is:

[ 'ms-vscode.references-view',
  'ms-vsliveshare.vsliveshare',
  'ms-vsliveshare.cloudenv',
  'ms-vsliveshare.cloudenv-explorer',
  'GitHub.vscode-pull-request-github',
  'Microsoft.vscode-nmake-tools',
  'atlassian.atlascode',
  'ms-vscode-remote.remote-containers',
  'ms-vscode-remote.remote-containers-nightly',
  'ms-vscode-remote.remote-ssh',
  'ms-vscode-remote.remote-ssh-nightly',
  'ms-vscode-remote.remote-ssh-edit',
  'ms-vscode-remote.remote-ssh-edit-nightly',
  'ms-vscode-remote.remote-ssh-explorer',
  'ms-vscode-remote.remote-ssh-explorer-nightly',
  'ms-vscode-remote.remote-wsl',
  'ms-vscode-remote.remote-wsl-nightly',
  'ms-vscode-remote.vscode-remote-extensionpack',
  'ms-vscode-remote.vscode-remote-extensionpack-nightly' ]

Our current list is:

[ 'ms-vscode.references-view', 'ms-vsliveshare.vsliveshare' ]

We can get Remote Development working by adding these proposals pre-build, as we are adding the liveshare proposal.

[qlan3]

Thanks!@stripedpajamas
I can use Remote Development extension pack now. There is still an error. When I try to connect to a server, I get this error: "Failed to connect to the remote extension host server (Error: Connection error: Version mismatch, client refused.)". However, I can use VS code to connect the server.

[brianclinkenbeard]

FYI (since inclusion is being discussed and also some vscodium users seem to care about this) the remote development pack is at least currently not FOSS.

[stripedpajamas]

@qlan3 unfortunately the server side code is not open source, so I don't know what conditions cause that error message. I would suspect it is because only Visual Studio Code is supported. Also, as @brianclinkenbeard mentioned, this feature if not freely licensed. This link as additional links to other related licenses to do with the Remote Dev extension, and they all restrict use to a "validly licensed copy of Microsoft Visual Studio Code". VSCodium (or a manual build of the vscode repo) do not fall into this category.

Will close this out for now, as I don't think there's anything further we can do until the licensing opens up or it's taken out of beta.

[tlrdstd]

I've bounced off this several times, so leaving a breadcrumb trail here for others. Combining this ticket, this bug report, and these docs, I did the following on my Mac, after installing vscodium via https://formulae.brew.sh/cask/vscodium:

vim /Applications/VSCodium.app/Contents/Resources/app/product.json
# edit extensionAllowedProposedApi to read:
"extensionAllowedProposedApi": ["ms-vscode.references-view", "ms-vsliveshare.vsliveshare", "ms-vscode-remote.vscode-remote-extensionpack", "ms-vscode-remote.remote-ssh"],

That gets me past the command 'opensshremotes.*' not found errors, but I still can't connect due to:

Failed to connect to the remote extension host server (Error: Connection error: Version mismatch, client refused.)

I filed https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-remote-release/issues/967 , and it appears to be a deliberate licensing choice by Microsoft to not allow use of the Remote Development extension pack with vscodium (as others have mentioned above).

No new information here, but wanted to put all the known details in one place.

[rawtaz]

FWIW, I questioned the limitation in the extension over at https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-remote-release/issues/1925 .