Reduce files in vscode remote distro

[taiyosogawa]

The vscode remote distro currently has many small files, which causes unzipping the archive to be slow. Would it be possible to pack the dependencies into fewer files?

[vscodebot]

(Experimental duplicate detection)
Thanks for submitting this issue. Please also check if it is already covered by an existing one, like:

• Update distro (#82092)
• Update distro (#83950)

[aeschli]

I investigated if we can use ASAR on the server as well.
https://www.npmjs.com/package/asar-node gave me the impression that this is possible.
It is done by patching fs to handle asar files like folders and by patching the code that computes the node_module lookup paths.

Turns out that what https://www.npmjs.com/package/asar-node promises doesn't work (anymore?).
The NodeJS loader uses internal API to make stat calls that can not be patched in NodeJS. See nodejs/node#33423
Electron patched the Node runtime to get access to the internal API (https://github.com/electron/electron/blob/master/lib/asar/fs-wrapper.ts)

[aeschli]

So instead I went the traditional way of improve the filters used by the build script and filing issues against extensions that contain a lot of files (with the request to package their sources)

[aeschli]

files / folder	1.50.1 stable	1.51 insiders
bin	1	1
extensions	865	778
node_modules	917	436
out	24	24
total files	1813	1245
total size	113 M	105 M

[aeschli]

1.51 insiders:
Extensions:
configuration-editing/: 7
css-language-features/: 10
debug-auto-launch/: 6
debug-server-ready/: 5
emmet/: 5
extension-editing/: 5
git-ui/: 5
git/: 35
github-authentication/: 5
github/: 5
grunt/: 7
gulp/: 7
html-language-features/: 13
image-preview/: 13
jake/: 7
json-language-features/: 10
markdown-language-features/: 14
merge-conflict/: 7
microsoft-authentication/: 7
ms-vscode.js-debug-companion/: 6
ms-vscode.js-debug/: 89
ms-vscode.node-debug/: 19
ms-vscode.node-debug2/: 354
ms-vscode.references-view/: 6
ms-vscode.vscode-js-profile-table/: 7
node_modules/: 76
npm/: 8
php-language-features/: 7
python/: 6
search-result/: 8
typescript-language-features/: 19

[aeschli]

• open a remote window (wsl, containers or ssh)
• in the integrated terminal find the server location with which code-insiders
• count files with find -type f | wc -l

Verifiy that it is now around 1245 files.