Cannot remove plugins from Theia IDE

[dagoston93]

Hi,

I created an IDE project by downloading the Theia IDE repo and customize it as necessary.
I managed to add some custom features, change the branding, but I have problems with removing stuff...

First I tried to remove some Themes (for example Abyss, Red, Solarized, etc...), but failed to do so.
First I tried to add the package ids to the theiaPluginsExcludeIds properties of the main package.json file. But after running yarn clean, deleting the plugins folder, and then re-building the themes still exists in the File/Preferences/Color Themes
Then I tried to remove the whole eclipse-theia.builtin-extension-pack that includes them, thinking that I will re-add plugins I need, but after re-building the same way, no effect...

Then I thought I would try to remove a couple of views that I do not need. But again, failure...
What I did was, to remove some dependencies from the applications/electron/package.json file.
For example:

• @theia/callhierarchy
• @theia/outline-view
• and a couple of others...

But again after rebuilding, nothing happens, the views are still available, and even more strangely, the plugins are downloaded to the plugins folder...

What am I doing wrong, and how to remove the items I do not need?

Thanks in advance for any help,
Best regards,
Agoston

[msujew]

Hey @dagoston93,

Then I thought I would try to remove a couple of views that I do not need. But again, failure...

Since all of these packages are required during compile time by the @theia/plugin-ext package (that provides the plugin support), removing them doesn't do anything, as they will be transitively pulled anyway.

We have a contribution filter API to prevent certain widgets/commands/menus from being contributed. You should use that instead.

But again after rebuilding, nothing happens, the views are still available, and even more strangely, the plugins are downloaded to the plugins folder...

What kind of IDs are you using for the theiaPluginsExcludeIds property? They need the full id, i.e. <publisher>.<name>.

In case that doesn't help, please provide a reproducible example repo.

[tortmayr]

@dagoston93 You need to negate your filter predicates. The contribution filter function behaves like the Array.filter function i.e. it includes everything that evaluates to true and filters everything that evaluates to false.
In addition, I also recommend to filter out the WidgetFactory of the outline view. Otherwise you might run into the issue that the outlineview is restored from the local storage.

Something like this should work:

import { ContributionFilterRegistry, FilterContribution } from "@theia/core";
import { injectable } from "inversify";
import { OutlineViewService } from "@theia/outline-view/lib/browser/outline-view-service";
import { OUTLINE_WIDGET_FACTORY_ID, OutlineViewContribution } from "@theia/outline-view/lib/browser/outline-view-contribution";
import { OutlineBreadcrumbsContribution } from "@theia/outline-view/lib/browser/outline-breadcrumbs-contribution";
import { WidgetFactory } from '@theia/core/lib/browser';

@injectable()
export class SwcTstContributionFilter implements FilterContribution {
    registerContributionFilters(registry: ContributionFilterRegistry): void {
        // Remove Outline view
        registry.addFilters("*", [
            (contrib) => !(contrib instanceof OutlineViewService),
            (contrib) => !(contrib instanceof OutlineViewContribution),
            (contrib) => !(contrib instanceof OutlineBreadcrumbsContribution),
        ]);
        registry.addFilters(
            [WidgetFactory],
            [filterById(id => OUTLINE_WIDGET_FACTORY_ID !== id)]
        );

    }
}

function filterById(filter: Filter<string>): Filter<object & { id?: string }> {
    return object =>
        object.id ? filter(object.id) : true;

}

[dagoston93]

You need to negate your filter predicates...

Thank you, that solves it :)

Do they really not appear in the builtins of the extensions view?

If I delete the plugins folder, then they are not there, but show up in the Preferences/Color Theme...
Anyway, I will try to clean my file system, because, I had installation of Theia IDE, the customized IDE and it's git repo... Somewhere, something must be stuck...

Thank you both for the help :)

[dagoston93]

And one more thing came up?
How do I remove preferences?
I managed to remove the @theia/debug module using the above technique, but it has a bindDebugPreferences() method, and uses the bind(DebugPreferences).toDynamicValue() to bind the preferences, but I cannot use that technique to filter out DebugPreferences because I get a compile error.
How can I get around this?

[msujew]

I wouldn't recommend removing preferences as most service implementations are written with preferences having default values in mind. I.e. you might accidentally breaking features with that. Instead, I would recommend hiding them. For example for some of the debug preferences:

import { debugPreferencesSchema } from '@theia/debug/lib/browser/debug-preferences';
debugPreferencesSchema.properties['debug.trace'].included = false;

That way they are hidden from the user but still available programmatically with their default values.

[dagoston93]

Thanks, that works fine.

One more problem I encounter...
I am trying to exclude ms-vscode.js-debug and ms-vscode.js-debug-companion plugins, I add them to the theiaPluginsExcludeIds section of package.json, but unlike other extensions, they still get downloaded...

How can I prevent it?
Are they special in any way?
I did search for their package name, but the only reference to it are in eclipse-theia.builtin-extension-pack (which shall not cause problems, as I exclude successfully other packages referenced by it), and in my package.json where I exclude it...

Thanks in advance for your answer,
BR,
Agoston