Document how to modify product.json

[itspngu]

I just spent about half an hour reading through Github issues and source code of VSCode & VSCodium to figure out how to get Pylance working. In short:

• The workaround described here suggests editing a product.json file, but find $HOME/.var/app/com.vscodium.codium -name 'product.json' returns nothing
• Found product.json should be editable #22 which links to customize the extensions gallery VSCodium/vscodium#674
• The linked PR contains a patch which looks for a user-provided product.json to merge into the compiled-in values - by default, no product.json is included in shipped builds
• Dropping the following file into $HOME/.var/app/com.vscodium.codium/config/VSCodium/product.json lets me run Pylance:

{
  "nameShort": "Visual Studio Code",
  "nameLong": "Visual Studio Code",
  "extensionsGallery": {
    "serviceUrl": "https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/_apis/public/gallery",
    "cacheUrl": "https://vscode.blob.core.windows.net/gallery/index",
    "itemUrl": "https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items"
  }
}

As this is a rather specific workaround to a specific problem, perhaps just including a note somewhere is enough to spare others from having to go through the same journey.

[noonsleeper]

Hey @itspngu, will be great if you make a PR about it! =)

[wiraki]

Just here to say that if I am not mistaken, this is technically illegal.

[bxff]

Also refer: VSCodium/vscodium#940 (comment)

[r1jsheth]

Just here to say that if I am not mistaken, this is technically illegal.

@mpauper very curious being a newbie, how is it technically illegal to document this?

[GitMensch]

While I think you are kidding even without an explicit smiley: anyone is free to document this, but both using Pylanc and the MS marketplace means you need to follow their license - which explicit says that the license only allows those to be used with Microsoft products (and Microsoft made quite clear that "vscode-oss builds" don't match that description).

It would therefore be most reasonable to document that instead of any hacks one should use https://github.com/flathub/com.visualstudio.code if one wants to use these Microsoft services and (binary-only distributed) extensions.