vscodejs

easy-extensibility

Extend VSCode without the ceremony of making a full extension! Just write your code anywhere and it'll be part of VSCode!

Features

• New keybinding: cmd+E to evaluate a selection of JavaScript, or the entirety of the current line.
  • Use shift+cmd+E to insert the result onto the next line.
• New keybinding: cmd+H to provide a command pallet for user-defined commands using this extension.
• The easy-extensibility Extension API, or “E API”, which acts as a high-level user-friendly alterative to the default vscode Extension API.

Accessibility

• Open the tutorial to learn more about using cmd+E by invoking cmd+h tutorial
• To learn about “saving reusable functions and having them load automatically”, please invoke cmd+h find users init.js file, or provide a template

Extensive Docs

The E API is well-documented; for example the E.readInput method's docs even suggest an example user extension.

Anaphoric Usage (with code completion & docstrings)

The current implementation treats VSCode as if it were dynamically-scoped: Any open editor may mention E, commands, vscode with no ceremonial import of any kind!

• This is similar to the use of the keyword this in object-oriented programming: It's an implicitly introduced argument!

However, for discovarability and example uses, it would be nice to have code completetion: Just write E. and wait a second to see possible completions ---or write the name of the method you want to use and if it's part of the E API, you'll also get completion as shown below.

A growing user-friendly API!

Why this (meta)extension?

There is essentially only one step () to making an extension. Sharing an extension, such as a tiny 5-line command, should be as easy as having that defintion code readily available.

In constrast, the default approach to making a VSCode extension is as follows:

1. Make a new NodeJS project, say with yo code as per https://code.visualstudio.com/api/get-started/your-first-extension
2. Actually write your extension's code
3. Run your code in a dedicated sandbox with F5, far from your code
4. Try your extension; stop the sandbox; alter your code; repeat.
5. Now to actually make use of your extension, you should pacakge it with vsce package
   • To share it with others, you'll need to:
     1. Make a Microsoft account
     2. Make a new Azure organisation, as in https://dev.azure.com/alhassy
     3. Create a Personal Access Token for use in the extension marketplace; as per https://code.visualstudio.com/api/working-with-extensions/publishing-extension

This approach doesn't encourage making extensions ---since there's so much ceremony--- and it, likewise, doesn't encourage sharing/packaging up the resulting (tiny) extensions.

Invoke cmd+h tutorial to see the tutorial, which concludes with a comparison of our init.js-style extensions versuses thats of the default VSCode style.