Code OSS is kinda like Stock Android - if you want some of the best features, you kinda need the full-fat version

Denial

Let me start by saying this: I love Arch. I've been using it for about half a year now, (ever since my first foray into mini-pcs - highly recommended, neither sponsored nor affiliated) and everything has kinda become second nature and I don't think I'll be going back to Debian or Windows for my main desktop.

For coding, my favorite editor/environment is VS Code (whether if I was at work on my work MacBook, or on my previous Debian desktop, or *shudders* on my old Windows install) and I've become accustomed to many of its features and abilities. From time to time, I like to pair-code a personal project with a friend, which is when VS Code's Live Share feature comes in clutch.

Anger

Some of you may already know where I'm going with this - but if not, here's the gist:

  • Arch likes open source
  • I like open source
  • VS Code is based on an open sourced project
  • Arch officially maintains the open source project in it's pacman repo
  • VS Code is Microsoft's version of that project, with some proprietary bells and whistles
  • One of these whistles is the Live Share feature
  • Arch does not support that proprietary version (VS Code)
  • I installed Code OSS
  • Code OSS does not have Live Share
  • I am sad

But not one to take an 'L' (that easily), I looked around and found the ArchWiki article on VS Code which alludes to a couple of ways to get that working on Code OSS.

Bargaining

And so I followed the instructions and installed code-marketplace and code-features from the AUR hoping that it would magically solve my problem. I was able to install the Live Share extension from the marketplace, but I got Command ... not found errors for various functions of that extension.

I also tried to manually add the provided lines in my product.json (which the two patch packages didn't add):

...
  "extensionAllowedProposedApi": [
    "ms-vsliveshare.vsliveshare",
    "ms-vscode.node-debug",
    "ms-vscode.node-debug2"
  ]
...

Depression

... that didn't work.

Acceptance

Since I'm installing from the AUR anyway, I decided to just install visual-studio-code-bin. Everything seems to work. Maybe I'll revisit this some other day.

What I ended up doing is essentially this:

#!/bin/bash

# Optional: Install `yay` to make installing packages from AUR more convenient
cd ~
mkdir AUR
cd AUR
sudo pacman -Syu
sudo pacman -S --needed git base-devel && git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yay.git && cd yay && makepkg -si

# Copy over old Code OSS settings and extensions
cd ~
cp -a .vscode-oss .vscode

# Install the VS Code binary from the AUR, accept the prompt to replace Code OSS
yay -Syu visual-studio-code-bin