vsix

Host your private Marketplace by downloading and serving extensions to Visual Studio Code in your own environment. The tool can be useful when working in air gapped environments but you still want access to Visual Studio Code extensions.

Installation

vsix is distributed as a single binary file. The current release support the operating systems and architectures below.

macOS (Apple Silicon)

curl -OL https://github.com/spagettikod/vsix/releases/download/v2.2.0/vsix2.2.0.macos-arm64.tar.gz
sudo tar -C /usr/local/bin -xvf vsix2.2.0.macos-arm64.tar.gz

Linux

curl -OL https://github.com/spagettikod/vsix/releases/download/v2.2.0/vsix2.2.0.linux-amd64.tar.gz
sudo tar -C /usr/local/bin -xvf vsix2.2.0.linux-amd64.tar.gz

Docker

docker run --rm -it spagettikod/vsix info golang.Go

You can bind mount folders to /data in the container when working with downloaded extensions.

docker run --rm -it \
      -v $(pwd):/data \
      spagettikod/vsix update /my_extensions_to_sync

Getting Started

Create a folder where you store downloaded extensions.

mkdir extensions

Add a few extensions you would like to have available off-line.

vsix add --data extensions golang.Go gruntfuggly.todo-tree

Start your own marketplace serving the extensions you added above.

vsix serve --data extensions https://vsix.myserver.com:8443/_apis/public/gallery myvsix.cert myvsix.key

If you run your own DNS you can hijack marketplace.visualstudio.com and point it to your local server or you can modify product.json in your Visual Studio Code installation. The former has the benefit of not having to modify your local Visual Studio Code installation while the latter one needs to be reapplied after each update of Visual Studio Code.

1. Open product.json. On macOS (if Visual Studio Code is installed in the Applications folder) this file is located at /Applications/Visual Studio Code.app/Contents/Resources/app/product.json.
2. Find the extensionGallery block and edit the serviceUrl to point to your server. For example, using the example above https://vsix.myserver.com:8443/_apis/public/gallery:

   ...
   "extensionsGallery": {
     "serviceUrl": "https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/_apis/public/gallery",
   },
   ...

3. Restart Visual Studio Code and start using extensions from your own marketplace.

Update extensions

To update and fetch the latest version of the extensions on your local marketplace you run the update command.

vsix update --data extensions

This will check for newer versions and download the most current one of your extensions if needed. It will only download the latest version, not all versions inbetween your latest version and the latest version at Visual Studio Code Marketplace.

Multiple platforms

Some extensions support multiple platforms. If you don't have or use all platforms you can limit which platforms you want to add. When you run the update-command it will only update those platforms that were added. If you want to add a platform later on you can add it by running the add command again.

This example will add an extension limiting it to the darwin-arm64 platform.

vsix --data extensions add --platforms darwin-arm64 redhat.java

When adding multiple extensions and limiting to certain platforms you must remember to include the universal platform, which most extensions belong to. Otherwise these will not be added. A good rule of thumb is to always add all platforms you want to support, regardless of extension.

vsix --data extensions add --platforms universal,darwin-arm64,linux-amd64,win32-arm64 golang.Go redhat.java

You can use the info sub command to check which platforms are supported for a certain extension.

Pre-release

Some extensions provide pre-release versions. These can in some cases be updated quite frequently. By default pre-release versions will not be downloaded by the add and update command. If you want an update to include pre-releases

vsix --data extensions --pre-release golang.Go ms-python.python