Should we fork VS Code?

[WaynePhillipsEA]

I've toyed with this idea for a while now. You guys know I love VS Code very much, and its extensibility is frankly amazing. However, there are certain things that the VS Code team are not open to considering supporting such as proper customizable toolbars, and fully customizable menus, to name just a couple of them. There are also some things I'd love to do to make the transition from VB6/VBA more familiar for developers that are just impossible to implement as a VS Code extension.

Is it a mad idea to create our own fork of Code OSS and do whatever customizations we see fit? i.e. an official twinBASIC IDE?

It could be a maintenance nightmare. VS Code has major releases every month that introduce vast amounts of new features and bug fixes. Realistically, If we did fork it, we'd probably only be able to sync with the VS Code codebase every so often... perhaps annually. So we'd effectively miss out on the brand new VS Code features. But that may not be a bad thing either, as it allows the new features to mature before we look at using them for tB.

Also of note is that on two occasions the monthly update to VS Code broke something in tB that required me to make some adjustments and release tweaked versions of tB to match the changes in VS Code. So having a stable fork to work off would certainly help in this regard.

Enough from me... any thoughts?

[bclothier]

Few questions:

1. You already have a process for compiler. What's stopping you from spawning whatever you can't do in VSCode from the compiler process (or maybe a new dedicated process)? This may imply a popup window for GUI stuff, which may or may not be a bad thing.

2. In those 2 occasions where you had to make adjustments, did it help improve tB itself, or was it just to make it work with VSCode?

2b) Have you shared this w/ them? Have other extensions author reported similar experience? (this is to gauge how common this is among other extensions)

3. Are you in a position to write meaningful unit tests to assert that tB extension will work with VSC?

4. Can the fork be private? On the flip side, can other extensions be used? (imagine one needing access to JavaScript extension which may require latest version of VSCode but also needing C extension to compile C DLL as part of tB building so it must run in the forked version)

[WaynePhillipsEA]

Thanks for your thoughts on this @bclothier.

1... I am always trying to consider the bigger picture of cross platform, and with the extension also being cross platform in the future, having everything fully integrated into VS Code is quite a major factor in my decisions. Take the form designer as an example... it was no easy task to make that work efficiently in VS Code when the rendering has to be done out-of-process in the compiler process. It would have been a heck of a lot easier to have the compiler display a Windows form to do the editing, but then what would we do when we want a Linux or Mac based form designer? We'd have a lot of work to do in each environment to get something similar. The way it is implemented now (as an integrated webview with HTML/js) will simply just work when we move to Linux / Mac / whatever.

2... I don't recall the details of the first one. The one from last month was due to my error in passing a 'noDebug' flag to the VS Code debug API which had no meaningful effect in previous versions of VS Code, but suddenly in the last release stopped all breakpoints from working. I hold my hands up.... I am human :)

3... No, not at the moment. The extension needs some love (and an upgrade to TS rather than JS).

4... I would guess we'd have a public fork so that anyone can contribute, and we'd ensure that the fork can be used and installed independently from VS Code so as not to interfere with it (I believe the Code-OSS build process already does exactly that).

[uwbwsvd]

I have no knowledge of VS code except what I need for TB. An IDE makes life comfortable, but only when what lies underneath works. Compiler and the necessary structures.
In my opinion, a fork of the IDE in the current state of development of TB is only necessary if essential parts of the compiler and the structure cannot be implemented. (Translated by DeepL)

[bclothier]

I would suggest that having some coverage on the extension itself may be more instructive than getting a bunch of random opinions because then you can get data on how often VS code's updates impact the extension and in what ways. That may then help you determine how likely you will be negatively impacted by changes in VSCode and either make the case or argue against for forking.

One aspect I did not consider is when you get to replicating the VB6 controls, will using a web browser make it difficult to do so? Would you need to be able to set up a traditional Windows host system with all the usual windows to support designing and manipulating VB6 controls?

[dmrvb]

Its a good idea but I suggest no, or at least not yet, unless it turns out to be essential. You have a LOT of stuff to do and this is a potential distraction, or maybe somebody else could do it?
The paying TB users are more important at this stage and these are likely more serious programmers and so less deterred by a different/awkward IDE.
Its taken a fair while to get a compiler that is 99% compatible with VBx (and not as fast) and I suspect getting the GUI working and even 90% compatible will be an even bigger job.
TB has huge potential but its not really of use yet (to me at least). As a minimum it needs to compile a DLL that is faster than VBx, but really needs a GUI that is at least as good as VBx before its a success .
Is it possible that just the threat of a fork might get some things to change????

[WaynePhillipsEA]

@dmrvb This is not something I'm thinking of doing imminently :) There is a roadmap in place that will be followed. This is more of a general discussion about the possible future direction of the IDE and to discuss the pros/cons if we decided to go down that route. I wouldn't necessarily have to take the lead on such a project either.

[mansellan]

Is it worth considering Eclipse Theia? It's based on VSCode but designed to be even more extensible and modular. It supports menus out of the box I believe. Its not an IDE itself, but an open-source platform from which people can easily produce their own IDEs.

I've not used it but it might be an easier path than creating a whole new fork. It claims to directly support many VSCode extensions, but I have no idea how easy (or otherwise!) it would be to get tB working there.

[WaynePhillipsEA]

@mansellan I have never heard of it... it sounds too good to be true! That is most definitely worth a look.

[WaynePhillipsEA]

In terms of API support, theia is currently working towards v1.55.2 of the vscode API (eclipse-theia/theia#9863)... in other words about 6 months behind. That's not too bad. By the time we get to look at this in more detail they will likely have the Testing API support in, and then there shouldn't be much stopping us trying out tB with theia and seeing how well they work together. Very interesting, thanks @mansellan

The window/panel docking looks so much better and more configurable in theia. That is one thing that is really frustrating in vscode.

[mansellan]

Yeah I've been reading up on it. The lag is understandable given they're downstream of VSC, which is at best sorta-OSS* In your OP though you said that not being bleeding-edge with updates might actually be a plus.

In terms of downsides, well it's dual-licensed against the Eclipse Public License and the GPL v2, both of which oblige one to submit patches to Theia (iiuc, not any extensions) back upstream. And its unclear whether it will have the longevity of VSC, as its more niche. May be best to keep VSC extension as an option, even if its less feature-rich.

* terms and conditions apply

A big plus though is that they fully endorse commercial use, including making available a pre-configured IDE for your customers. VSCode, the Product, explicitly forbids this, you would have to go to the VSC project (MIT) or VSCodium to do that.

[dmrvb]

Theia looks interesting.
In the longer term I agree that a fork/dedicated TB version should be a serious option. The IDE is a big part of TB and needs to be under TB control. I find it very frustrating when I'm doing something urgent/difficult, inadvertently download a new version, and find the user interface has changed.

[tsmaeder]

Eclipse Public License and the GPL v2, both of which oblige one to submit patches to Theia (iiuc, not any extensions) back upstream

Well, not really...what they do compel you to do (if I remember correctly), is to publish any changes to the original source code under the same license. But wouldn't contributing fixes, etc. back to the upstream project be the neighborly thing to do anyway?
As for behavioral changes: Theia is designed to let you remove and replace a lot of behavior without patching the original source code: you just override the service in your own extension via dependency injection.

[mansellan]

Eclipse Public License and the GPL v2, both of which oblige one to submit patches to Theia (iiuc, not any extensions) back upstream

Well, not really...what they do compel you to do (if I remember correctly), is to publish any changes to the original source code under the same license. But wouldn't contributing fixes, etc. back to the upstream project be the neighborly thing to do anyway? As for behavioral changes: Theia is designed to let you remove and replace a lot of behavior without patching the original source code: you just override the service in your own extension via dependency injection.

You're right of course, patches are not required by license. But they are a nice thing to give back, given you have to make your source available anyway.

[ReneMiner]

I am about to drop out of twinbasic again. I did never make the change from vb6 to vb.net for a reason:
It's not under my control. And now you guys come up with some basic language that seems i was looking for over the last 20 years or so.
BUT vs code... a no-go - already the nightmare having to configure it and reconfig after an update and all those popups and requests for attention when i think about how to twist numbers around in memory... how could i with all the distracting bling-bling. Cant i just use a simple text-editor - or even a customizeable one that allows what is really needed as load and save a bit of auto-backup, some user tools to implement build, run, debug etc. so not to use MS Notepad Editor and console for commands only. i would set the limit between "ok" and "too much" exactly between SynWrite and CudaText where SynWrite is the former solo-project of a now cuda-text co-developer. Have both available on Github i think. Also notepad++ is still within limits of what can be handled without loosing the overview - mainly - but notepad++ is in my eyes a text-editor with the ability to display and edit code while synwrite appears to be a multi-coding-language-editor that just was developed too early because the coding language for that its made was not invented at that time. It's definetely not perl, python nor pascal that make it use all its abilities and since a long time i am certain it's perfect for basic. I use it sometimes to write code in thinBasic (no typo, thinBasic - also tB - embeddeable to anything - but .net and associated - as scripting- or standalone language with maximum of control an highest level of "inter-compatibility" - many snippets of different basic-dialects can be used almost unchanged and if not: it's almost too easy to create a few functions to serialize conversation. And for the rest - a powerful texteditor with ability to create, store and edit macros or to run custom scripts over the code and a solid regEx serves while vs code is - as visual studio - way to heavy, cumbersome and if someone would tell me just to configure it to my needs - i would like slap his face for that. Where is the configuration panel? And where are the settings that i want to configure? And how much time do i have to waste for the search to toggle this or that before i can type line of code. And whats that "disabled for security - click here to learn more"-stuff and why does it open more and more instances and where is now the one with my first line of code? And just when i found it read for a second - ah yes there it is - and i stopped moving the mouse for that second before i continue and want to click into that window - pop - exactly when the left button maks that click-sound and i am on an survey how i like vs code and if i would recommend my new installed extension... thats too much. VS Code - and the like to code something tonight is gone.
I don't drag my desk and a chair outside to the center of the marketplace where i would like to sit inbetween noisy merchants and theirs clients while i think of how to write a function to achieve a certain result while some peasants pass by and ask me to play some really intersting new game or nosy browse the files of the pc in front of me . Anyone can understand that were ineffective and would probably never result in a finished, correct working piece of code. So i do that at home. Alone.
And why should i invite the merchants and peasants there?

If you have developed this language already your team has the required tools and knowledge. Probably a bit lack of time as always since still so many things to do. But hey: VB6 lives a lot through its IDE, the visual designer and the tools that are working together. And it's independent from any 3rd-party tools. The developers that time did not have to accept any restrictions to theirs software nor any dictations of rules to follow what they will implement or not. The company had full control over what they might expose or hide and forged something, that i would say survived already the technology that kicked it from it's throne.
In another 20 years vb6 is still an instance known to developers and users and new users as well. But huh - what was .net? something like .com - the filename-extension of an internet-address?

even the effort its worth it to have full control and all strings together that you can pull. And give users the feeling of full control. if they are mighty: provide extensions for them who ask more.

thats a lot to read. i know. i do not add any links, ask google - google knows everything, you will find the keywords.