desktop.ts

Getting started

Building deb and rpm packages requires fakeroot and rpm; run: sudo apt-get install fakeroot rpm On Debian-based Linux: sudo apt-get install build-essential g++ libx11-dev libxkbfile-dev libsecret-1-dev libkrb5-dev python-is-python3

sudo apt-get install build-essential g++ libx11-dev libxkbfile-dev libsecret-1-dev libkrb5-dev python-is-python3

cd src
# node_v20
npm install --verbose

Troubleshooting

In case of issues, try deleting the contents of ~/.node-gyp (alternatively ~/.cache/node-gyp for Linux, ~/Library/Caches/node-gyp/ for macOS, or %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\node-gyp for Windows) first and then run git clean -xfd and then try again.

Then you have two options:

• If you want to build from inside VS Code, you can open the vscode folder and start the build task with Ctrl+Shift+B (CMD+Shift+B on macOS). The build task will stay running in the background even if you close VS Code. If you happen to close VS Code and open it again, just resume the build by pressing Ctrl+Shift+B (CMD+Shift+B) again. You can kill it by running the Kill Build VS Code task or pressing Ctrl+D in the task terminal.
• If you want to build from a terminal, run npm run watch. This will run both the core watch task and watch-extension tasks in a single terminal.

Desktop

Running on Electron with extensions run in NodeJS:

macOS and Linux

./scripts/code.sh
./scripts/code-cli.sh # for running CLI commands (eg --version)

Windows

.\scripts\code.bat
.\scripts\code-cli.bat

👉 Tip! If you receive an error stating that the app is not a valid Electron app, it probably means you didn't run npm run watch first.

VS Code for the Web

Extensions and UI run in the browser.

👉 Besides npm run watch also run npm run watch-web to build the web bits for the built-in extensions.

macOS and Linux

./scripts/code-web.sh

Windows

.\scripts\code-web.bat

Code Server Web

UI in the browser, extensions run in code server (NodeJS):

macOS and Linux

./scripts/code-server.sh --launch

Windows

.\scripts\code-server.bat --launch

You can identify the development version of VS Code ("Code - OSS") by the following icon in the Dock or Taskbar: