Create VS Code Editors

Easily create custom VS Code editors, using React for the UI.

WARNING: This project is not ready for production use. Proceed with caution

This is an opionated VS Code extension generator with the following features out of the box:

• You use React to build the Editor UX
• Editors will automatically work in all VS Code distributions:
  • VS Code desktop
  • github.dev
  • vscode.dev
  • Github Codespaces
• VS Code run/debug integration
• Automated publishing to the VS Code Marketplace
• HMR support for the editor coming soon

Checkout the Tldraw VS Code editor extension, that others and I built. This code is extracted from the Tldraw repo.

Example editors built with this project:

• Make your own customized Tldraw editor for VS Code

Install and Run

1. yarn create vscode-editor my-editor
2. cd my-editor
3. yarn start
4. VS Code will auto open
5. Run the extension by Pressing F5 or selecting Run -> Start Debugging
6. Open an .editor file (see examples/) from the newly launch VS Code window. You should see the placeholder drawing editor:

Customizing Editor

1. Do the Install and Run from above
2. Iterate on your custom editor by
   1. Changing the code in editor/src
   2. Use Command+R to reload the extension after you make changes to the editor code (HMR coming soon)
   3. Rinse and repeat

Share Your Extension

1. Create an extension installer, you can share directly to people
   1. yarn package
   2. The installer will be created in the out folder
   3. People can then use the installer by going to the extension window and choosing Install from VSIX...
2. Coming soon: automated publishing to the Marketplace. For now you can use the workflow where you upload the .vsix installer file

Todos

• Switch out Tldraw for a much simpler editor example. Make sure it's somewhat compelling and matches the vision of the project.
• Make sure setup instructions are accurate

Future Work

• Add tests
  • For the generator
  • To the template to provide ready to go VS Code extension testing for editors
• Add instructions and scripts for publishing automatically to the Marketplace
• Add hot reloading to both the extension and editor app. Switch from esbuild to Vite (uses esbuild anyway)
• Optimize editor instance launch times. Feels like >1sec right now on github.dev, vscode.dev, Codespaces
  • It's much faster on desktop but still not code editor level fast. Tldraw itself might need some optimizing for initialization speed.
  • Can we PWA functionality to cache the frontend?
• Make bidirectional document syncing patch based. This is important for github.dev, vscode.dev, and Codespaces as it reduces network traffic between the extension host and extension browser clientxw.
• Make patching underlying model patch based
• Make the project evolvable. Currently users would have to generate fresh project to get the latest. Instead they should just be able to update the dependency via yarn/npm.
• Provide some optional useful editor building infrastructure
• An undo/redo manager
• An app data model
• Multiplayer framework or Live Share integration
• Utilities for maintaining file formats with best practices for being easily evolvable/serializable.
• Add CLI support for flags for language ts/js and UI frameworks other than react like vue
• Use a proper CLI framework for the generator

This folder contains the source for the tldraw VS Code extension.

Developing

1. Install dependencies

• Run yarn from the root folder

2. Build @tldraw/tldraw

• Run yarn start from the root folder.

3. Start the editor

In the root folder:

• Run yarn start:vscode.

This will start the development server for the vscode/editor project and open the vscode/extension folder in a new window.

In the vscode/extension window, open the terminal and run:

• Install dependencies (yarn)
• Start the VS Code debugger (Menu > Run > Start Debugging)

Open a .editor file or create a new .editor file from the command palette.

Publishing

To publish, chat with the team on the Discord channel.

• Install vsce globally
• Run vsce login tldraw-org and sign in

In the vscode/extension folder:

• Run yarn vscode:publish

Implementation References

• yarn create
• Yarn Create & Yarn 1.0
• VS Code Marketplace Manager
• Web Extensions Guide
  • Test Your Web Extension
  • Web Extension Testing
  • An example custom editor that does work as a Web Extension
    • https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=hediet.vscode-drawio
    • https://github.com/hediet/vscode-drawio
• VS Code Extension API/Landing Page
• Getting Started
• Custom Editor API
• github.com/microsoft/vscode-extension-samples
• Extensions Guide -> Webviews
• Publishing Extensions