Offline mode for VS Code

[ramya-rao-a]

Below settings can be currently used to enter an offline mode

• telemetry.enableTelemetry
• telemetry.enableCrashReporter
• update.channel
• extensions.autoupdate
• extensions.showRecommendationsOnlyOnDemand
• update.showReleaseNotes

To completely enter an offline mode we need to, we also need to not check for extension updates which we do currently as it is useful to notify users who have disabled extension auto-updates that some of their extensions are outdated

Even so, changing 6 settings manually to enter offline mode is cumbersome. It would be much easier if we have a single setting controlling the offline mode

[aversini]

Great idea @ramya-rao-a .

Quick feedback: I tried your options but it seems that VS Code (1.25.1) still tries to connect outside. I'm behind a VPN and using a proxy. When setting all 5 options to false and restarting VS Code, I still get the popup question asking me for my proxy username and password...

EDIT: I had to change "update.channel" to "none" and it seems that "extensions.autoupdate" is not a valid setting - at least in 1.25.1 my bad, it's autoUpdate...

[ramya-rao-a]

Below are VS Code features that send requests over the network

User invoked features:

• Check for Updates (VS Code) via the top menu or the context menu in the activity bar or
• Check for Updates (Extensions) via the context menu in extensions view or command pallet
• Show Release Notes via the command pallet
• Upload logs via the command line
• Extension search in the extensions view (including Show Recommendations)
• Click on an extension post to get more details. The extension editor fetches icons/badges.
• Markdown preview of markdown that has links to online images/gifs/resources
• Issue Reporter that tries to find duplicates for the issue being logged

VS Code Features not invoked by the user:

• Telemetry
• Crash Reporter
• Checking for VS Code updates: Updates the badge on the gear icon, changes menu from Check for Updates.. to Install Update etc.
• Checking for extension updates: If Auto-update is disabled, this adds the version to update next to the installed extension in the extension view.
• Auto-update of extensions
• Opening Release Notes on VS Code update
• Using Bing for natural language search when searching settings
• Recommendations in the default extensions view
• Recommendations via prompts
  • workspace recommendations
  • file based recommendations
  • language pack recommendation
  • prompt to search marketplace for extensions that support current file type
• Experiment Service that fetches an online json file that describes experiments

VS Code features from built-in extensions invoked by user:

• A lot of git features
• Emmet: Update Image Size for the image specified by a url

VS Code features from built-in extensions not specifically invoked by user:

• Git Auto Fetch (but only after user updates the setting asking for this feature)
• json schema download
• Automatic type acquisition by typescript extension
• Completions and hover info by the npm extension

[ramya-rao-a]

Based on the above, we will end up losing a few essential features if we were to take the offline mode literally and try to shut off all features that make a network request

• Using Bing for natural language search when searching settings
• Automatic type acquisition by typescript extension
• json schema download

Also, after offline discussions, we came to the conclusion that user invoked actions should be supported regardless of whether they send requests over the network or not.

Due to this, having an uber switch to control the offline mode doesnt seem that useful. Instead below is the current proposal

• 🏃 All online features that are not user invoked should be backed by a setting such that the user can disable them.
  • auto check for extension updates
  • fetch package info online for npm dependencies to provide completion and hover info
  • online experiments
  • fetch json schemas (pending on [json] problem from unaccessible schema is distracting #51032)
• 🏃 The new settings editor should have a new grouping for such "online" features. This makes it easy for users to find these settings.
• Documentation on which online resources we use for such features on our website