Allow disabling built in extensions

[dbaeumer]

• VSCode Version: 1.8.0-insider

We have requests to support disabling all TS functionality. Instead of introducing a setting we should allow disabling built in extensions.

[waderyan]

@dbaeumer so I understand, would the user do something like this:

// in settings
"useBuiltInExtensions": // set to false

or would there be a setting for each built in extension?

// in settings
"useBuiltIn.TypeScriptExtension": // set to false

A concern I have is that the flow of this is so different than our other extensions. Should we consider an approach Atom took and show built in extensions in the extension viewlet? Maybe this is the approach you are suggesting.

[mjbvz]

@waderyan Would another approach be to have at least some of the built-in extensions listed in the extension pane where they could be managed using the standard extension UI?

[waderyan]

@mjbvz I agree with your point. What you describe is what I intended to describe in this sentence:

Should we consider an approach Atom took and show built in extensions in the extension viewlet?

Comment communication failure 😄

[mjbvz]

@waderyan Ok, sorry I missed that. That makes the most sense to me as well. We probably don't want all of the built-in extensions listed there, but it does make sense to whitelist extensions like typescript to address specific problems

[dbaeumer]

@waderyan @mjbvz I discussed that with @sandy081 and the idea was to have them listed in the extension vielwet and to allow disabling them but not to uninstall to give users a consistent experience.

[ubershmekel]

For anyone else finding this thread - my current solution to disable the internal typescript is to rename tsconfig.json to tsconfig2.json, then you let npm run typsecript like so:

  "scripts": {
    "tsc": "tsc --p tsconfig2.json",

For maintainers pondering why, here's my setup

topRepoFolderOpenInVSCode/
    otherFolders/
    nodeAppFolder/
        package.json
        tsconfig.json
        src/
            myfile.ts

I wanted to install typescript only locally (not -g, so I can just npm install and be done) so I have an npm script that runs tsc. The problem is VSCode does not let you click through to typescript errors because the error output references src/myfile.ts and not nodeAppFolder/src/myfile.ts. So my tasks.json can't just use cwd to work from nodeAppFolder, instead I use npm's --prefix to run the npm script that runs tsc. The problem is that the secret internal typescript isn't following my special setup and is evaluating based on the not-root tsconfig.json creating duplicate errors which I cannot cannot click through. They even sometimes come back after they'd already been fixed, it must be confused somehow. So I'm using my own secret tsconfig2.json.

Edit - I'm still seeing phantom errors. Going to open a separate issue. Sorry to bother.