code-server/doc/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing

• Detailed CI and build process docs
• Our VS Code Web docs

Requirements

Please refer to VS Code's prerequisites.

Differences:

• We require at least node v12 but later versions should work
• We use fnpm to build .deb and .rpm packages

Development Workflow

yarn
yarn vscode
yarn watch # Visit http://localhost:8080 once completed.

To develop inside of an isolated docker container:

./ci/dev/container/exec.sh

root@12345:/code-server# yarn
root@12345:/code-server# yarn vscode
root@12345:/code-server# yarn watch

Any changes made to the source will be live reloaded.

If changes are made to the patch and you've built previously you must manually reset VS Code then run yarn vscode:patch.

Some docs are available at ../src/node/app on how code-server works internally.

Build

yarn
yarn vscode
yarn build
yarn build:vscode
yarn release
cd release
yarn --production
node . # Run the built JavaScript with Node.

Now you can make it static and build packages with:

yarn release:static
yarn test:static-release
yarn package

The static release will be in ./release-static and .deb, .rpm and self-contained release in ./release-packages.