Users of pre-release extensions are switched back to stable and not back to pre-release after releases

[DanTup]

My understanding was that if a user switches to the pre-release version of an extension, this would set a persistent flag so that if a higher version stable was published and they were updated to it, they would also be moved back to the next pre-release version when one is published.

This doesn't seem to be the case for me. I thought it failed last month when I published and assumed I was incorrect, but I saw the same today.

• I was on a pre-release version (v3.33.202201xx)
• I published a new stable version (v3.34.0)
• VS Code updated to the new stable version and I did some testing
• I published a new pre-release version (v3.35.20220201)
• VS Code did not update me to v3.35.20220201 but still shows a "Switch to Pre-Release Version" button

I think I may be able to workaround this in future by publishing the new (higher-version) pre-release version before the (lower version) stable version. Although, I don't think this is working as expected (see #15756 (comment) and #15756 (comment)). (fyi @sandy081)

[sandy081]

Expected behaviour is to stick to pre-release always if opted to install pre-release first. If it is not working as expected, its a bug. I will investigate and see if I can repro.

[DanTup]

Thanks! It's not something I can easily test without making a dummy extension, so hopefully you have a better way. I don't know if it's related, but there is a dependency on the Dart extension from the Flutter one (I suspect not, but just FYI).

[sandy081]

I just tested this and it works for me

• auto updated from pre-release to release
• auto updated from release to pre-release

Can you please try from your side and let me know where it does not work?

[DanTup]

Hmm, odd. I'll have to do some more testing. Is there a good way I can do this without publishing a dummy/test extension to the live marketplace?

[sandy081]

probably you can tweak the package.json of the extension in the disk

[DanTup]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean? I'm wondering if I can get VS Code to auto-update an extension, eg. from pre-release to stable, without having to publish versions to the live marketplace.

[sandy081]

I am sorry that I am not clear. You can hack around to trigger an auto update and also change existing extension from pre-release to a release version by doing following steps

• Open the package.json of the installed extension from the installed extensions folder
• Change the version number in the package.json to lower number
• Change the isPreReleaseVersion value in __metadata property to false
• Restart VS Code and see the latest pre-release version of the extension is installed.

[DanTup]

Ah, gotcha. I don't know how that interacts with the flag VS Code keeps to know I was supposed to be on pre-release, so I decided to just test with a clean extension (I unpublished it afterwards). Everything worked as expected 🤷‍♂️

I'm not sure what's happened, and it's been long enough that I don't remember how certain I am about what I saw. I'll keep a close eye on this when I do the next releases and post back if I see it again. Since things seem to be working correctly, I think we can close this for now.

Thanks!