Remote Clippy Buddy

This VS Code extension installs pbcopy and pbpaste on your remote terminal.

• pbcopy: consume standard input and set it as the clipboard contents of your local computer
• pbpaste: outputs clipboard contents to standard output

Example usage

• ls | pbcopy
• pbpaste > ls_folder_contents

How does it work?

1. we create a couple of small scripts, pbpaste and pbcopy
2. when you connect to a remote workspace, we install these to the extension folder
3. we update PATH for VS Code terminals to include this folder

Additional Info

• For bugs and feature requests, please visit the repository on GitHub

Debugging

To debug the extension, you need to run it locally by changing a few places in code.

1. extension.ts blocks activation if the workspace is not connected to a remote. Comment that out temporarily.
2. install.ts uses process.execPath to launch the pb-paste/copy scripts. Change it to 'node' for local development because Electron's built-in node doesn't support what we do.

Release Testing

To test the real released version of this extension, you need to connect to a remote host.

1. Get a remote host somewhere
2. Connect vs code window to it
3. Laptop: build a vsix package via vsce package
4. Copy it to the remote host: scp extension.vsix user@host
5. Install from vsix on connected vs code window