Discussion: The Many Configuration/Theme File Formats

[admercs]

So then, Visual Studio Code uses a single json file format to define themes while Visual Studio uses no less than FIVE different file formats: vssettings, vstheme, xml, pkgdef, and vsix. And, it seems that none of these are interoperable, few translators exist, and there is no way to simply export your current custom font and color environment settings to any of these. For example, if I simply want to export by current settings to anything other than vssettings, I cannot, and if I do, I cannot then convert it into anything else. And yet, generating a single universal theme file is trivial in VS Code.

Am I missing something?

Might I suggest that the VS devs switch to a single readable format, JSON, and leave the other five behind? With its launch, please include a single file conversion program functionally similar to pandoc with its own intermediate representation. You could always compress to BSON and cache for faster loading. That would reduce the current SIX formats used by VS/Code down to ONE. That's a win for users, devs, and PMs alike.

Tasks

Beta Give feedback

1. Drop support for all five of the existing configuration file formats
2. Add support for JSON/BSON
3. Provide a file conversion program that supports all six file formats