Consider committing transpiled code (the out directory)

[DavidLGoldberg]

Discussed in #80

^{Originally posted by ilkkapoutanen-61n January 29, 2025}
Hi,

Since Microsoft recently disabled the vs marketplace feature that allowed downloading .vsix files, installing extensions became more difficult for users in areas with very poor internet, or those working in offline environments. Using another, internet-connected copy of VS Code to download the files is often not an option for these users. Using a GitHub zip download as an installation package is still possible with a directory rename hack: just download the repo as a zip, rename the top level directory to extension, then re-zip it, rename to .vsix and install.

For this to work end to end however, the transpiled form of the extension should exist in the zip file. For these offline users however, having the build-time dependencies or even a build environment can be another significant hurdle. On that note, and to finally get to the point, in order to support this user group, please consider either a) committing the transpiled form of the extension code, or b) submitting .vsix files as artifacts on your releases.

Thanks!