Visual Studio Code Portable - modern code editor

Submit portable freeware that you find here. It helps if you include information like description, extraction instruction, Unicode support, whether it writes to the registry, and so on.
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webfork
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Re: Visual Studio Code Portable - modern code editor

#16 Post by webfork »

Portability update ...

I ran another test on this and had a few updates
  • The Portable page addresses a "portable mode migration" (https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/portable), which is a very unusual thing to find, but I'm very happy to see. After all, if your local copy runs the way you want it to, why jump through all the necessary hoops again to get the portable version running the same?
  • dotNET developers may get prompted to install an "dotNET Core" IDE that isn't even remotely portable, but some csharp tools did save to the data\extensions folder at a unfriendly 300 megs. All told the process cost about a 1.1 gigs of space on my machine.
Also if anyone is familiar with compiling code in VS, please ping me or hop on our Discord channel at some point.
Last edited by webfork on Sun Jun 28, 2020 12:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: This is a dramatic edit over my initial post as I repeated a lot of things already covered in this thread. Sorry for any confusion.

freakazoid
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Re: Visual Studio Code Portable - modern code editor

#17 Post by freakazoid »

Didn't know that Microsoft would natively support portable mode for Visual Studio Code! That made me want to test VSCode out, so here it goes...

First impressions:
- Uncompressed filesize is 236MB
- Appears to be an Electron app
- Memory usage is beefy. Around 450MB idle. I've seen it jump up to 750MB just browsing some extensions. You can blame Electron for that.

The killer feature of VSCode is their extensions, which supports various languages and addons. Like say you might be interested in mobile app development, check out this article for some extensions to use:

Code: Select all

https://adtmag.com/articles/2019/05/21/vs-code-mobile.aspx
I know I've always wanted to code an Android app, so the Android extensions look promising. That's all I've got to say for a first impression!
is it stealth? ;)

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Re: Visual Studio Code Portable - modern code editor

#18 Post by rbon »

Topic Update:
Visual Studio Code Portable by CrazyMax ver. 1.52.0: it has created a wrapper in Go (Go language)
• Visual Studio Code Portable - program page: https://portapps.io/app/vscode-portable/
• GitHub download page: https://github.com/portapps/vscode-portable/releases
-> Author recommend to download portable-setup from GitHub:
• download Portable 32 bit: https://github.com/portapps/vscode-port ... -setup.exe
• download Portable 64 bit: https://github.com/portapps/vscode-port ... -setup.exe

Here are modifications (inside its wrapper) to original version by Microsoft:
Modifications
Here is what differs from the original release to ensure portability:
• VSCODE_APPDATA environment variable is overriden at launch and points to 'data\appdata'
• VSCODE_LOGS environment variable is overriden at launch and points to 'data\logs'
• VSCODE_EXTENSIONS environment variable is overriden at launch and points to 'data\extensions'
• Check for updates disabled
Note:
the site of CrazyMax for all his portable apps is Portapps.io https://portapps.io/

B.T.W.
current version of Visual Studio Code released by Microsoft is 1.52.1 - see:
• MajorGeeks https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/detail ... _code.html
• Microsoft - Update page: https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_52
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to build bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning." - Rick Cook.

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Re: Visual Studio Code Portable - modern code editor

#19 Post by hamasaki »

I think most of the portable apps by CrazyMax leave traces in the appData folder.

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Re: VSCodium (FLOSS version of VSCode)

#20 Post by Midas »

Just heard of VSCodium, "Free/Libre Open Source Software Binaries of VSCode"; VSCodium portability setup mimics VSCode's and info can be checked at the following URL:


VSCodium latest release is currently v1.53.2, dated 2021-02-12 -- changes and downloads at https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/releases.

VSCodium is a community-driven, freely-licensed binary distribution of Microsoft’s editor VSCode. MS VSCode source code is open source (MIT-licensed), but the product available for download (Visual Studio Code) is licensed under this not-FLOSS license and contains telemetry/tracking.

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Re: VSCodium (FLOSS version of VSCode)

#21 Post by webfork »

Midas wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 3:19 pm Just heard of VSCodium, "Free/Libre Open Source Software Binaries of VSCode"; VSCodium portability setup mimics VSCode's and info can be checked at the following URL:
Very interesting -- I was under the impression that Visual Studio Code was open source, which is not the case. I know they try to clarify that it's very minor components but I can definitely understand the position that you're either open or not. After all, virtually every large software project will have has SOME open source code in it, even Windows 95.

Wikipedia tries to clarify (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Studio_Code), but it looks like you really need to read the VSCodium site to get clarity. It's worth noting that competing projects Atom and Brackets are fully open source.

In any case, this is very useful as I wouldn't use anything else going forward besides VSCodium, even if it meant fewer features.

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Re: VSCodium (FLOSS version of VSCode)

#22 Post by SYSTEM »

webfork wrote: Sat Feb 20, 2021 12:00 am Very interesting -- I was under the impression that Visual Studio Code was open source, which is not the case.
VSCode is open source. The only difference is that Microsoft's official builds have the telemetry and branding. (If you consider VSCode closed source by this rationale, then Firefox wouldn't be open source either.)
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Re: VSCodium (FLOSS version of VSCode)

#23 Post by webfork »

SYSTEM wrote: Sat Feb 20, 2021 12:44 am
webfork wrote: Sat Feb 20, 2021 12:00 am Very interesting -- I was under the impression that Visual Studio Code was open source, which is not the case.
VSCode is open source. The only difference is that Microsoft's official builds have the telemetry and branding. (If you consider VSCode closed source by this rationale, then Firefox wouldn't be open source either.)
So if you downloaded the Firefox source code and then compiled it yourself, it would not have telemetry and branding?

I looked on the Firefox build and build FAQ page, no info there:

https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org ... build.html
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/doc ... _build_FAQ

I just ask because it seems natural someone would come out with a Firefox excludes telemetry and branding similar to VSCodium. Or is that all Waterfox is?

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Re: VSCodium (FLOSS version of VSCode)

#24 Post by SYSTEM »

webfork wrote: Sun Feb 21, 2021 11:16 pm So if you downloaded the Firefox source code and then compiled it yourself, it would not have telemetry and branding?

I looked on the Firefox build and build FAQ page, no info there:

https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org ... build.html
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/doc ... _build_FAQ

I just ask because it seems natural someone would come out with a Firefox excludes telemetry and branding similar to VSCodium. Or is that all Waterfox is?
It would have both AFAIK. However, Mozilla holds trademarks on Firefox brand and logo. This resulted in a dispute between Mozilla and Debian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_s ... _by_Debian

And if your focus is "is there any closed source code present?", Firefox does have some - the DRM modules used to decode encrypted video in sites like Netflix. (Technically they don't ship with FF itself. Instead FF downloads them automatically on background soon after launch.)
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Re: VSCodium (FLOSS version of VSCode)

#25 Post by webfork »

Midas wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 3:19 pm Just heard of VSCodium...
Those interested in VSCodium may also be interested to hear about an open alternative to the Visual Studio Marketplace:
https://apnews.com/press-release/globe- ... fc051bfb0f

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Re: Visual Studio Code Portable - modern code editor

#26 Post by webfork »

It doesn't appear to be widespread, but using caution with Visual Studio add-ons might be wise:

https://www.itsecurityguru.org/2021/05/ ... ply-chain/

As I understand it, there currently is no vetting process for VSCode extensions. Mozilla's warning on many of their add-on pages now kinda makes sense:

Image
(From the page of an extension I use frequently: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... t-editing/)

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Re: Visual Studio Code Portable - modern code editor

#27 Post by SYSTEM »

webfork wrote: Fri May 28, 2021 7:02 pm It doesn't appear to be widespread, but using caution with Visual Studio add-ons might be wise:

https://www.itsecurityguru.org/2021/05/ ... ply-chain/
I have been keeping an eye on VSCode updates out of interest and I'm aware of vulnerabilities which have been fixed in the past year or so. It used to affect even extremely popular extensions like ESLint (which is used, in short, to find potential bugs and enforce consistent style in JavaScript code written with VSCode). The extensions in question are well-meaning, but they used to trust configuration loaded from whatever code you're editing, which is bad if you've merely cloned a random untrusted repo from GitHub.
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Re: Visual Studio Code Portable - modern code editor

#28 Post by SYSTEM »

SYSTEM wrote: Fri May 28, 2021 7:42 pm
webfork wrote: Fri May 28, 2021 7:02 pm It doesn't appear to be widespread, but using caution with Visual Studio add-ons might be wise:

https://www.itsecurityguru.org/2021/05/ ... ply-chain/
I have been keeping an eye on VSCode updates out of interest and I'm aware of vulnerabilities which have been fixed in the past year or so. It used to affect even extremely popular extensions like ESLint (which is used, in short, to find potential bugs and enforce consistent style in JavaScript code written with VSCode). The extensions in question are well-meaning, but they used to trust configuration loaded from whatever code you're editing, which is bad if you've merely cloned a random untrusted repo from GitHub.
VSCode 1.57.0 has introduced a "Workspace Trust" feature to fix this problem: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/edit ... pace-trust
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Re: Visual Studio Code Portable - modern code editor

#29 Post by webfork »

SYSTEM wrote: Thu Jun 10, 2021 10:34 am VSCode 1.57.0 has introduced a "Workspace Trust" feature to fix this problem: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/edit ... pace-trust
Thanks for the update

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