Visual Studio Code Flatpak

🚨 Warning: This is an unofficial Flatpak build of Visual Studio Code, generated from the official Microsoft-built .deb packages. Use it at your own risk, it is recommended to build it yourself.

Table of Contents

• Quick Start
  • Build
    • Nested-sandbox install error
  • Signing
• Usage
  • Execute commands in the host system
  • Use host shell in the integrated terminal
  • Support for language extension
• Support

Quick Start

Add the remote repository:

flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists francoism90-vscode https://francoism90.github.io/com.visualstudio.code/index.flatpakrepo

Update the repository:

flatpak update

Install the app:

flatpak install francoism90-vscode com.visualstudio.code

Note: the app will automatically update when you run flatpak update.

flatpak run com.visualstudio.code

Build

It is possible to build the app yourself instead of using the prebuilt, signed repo above.

git clone https://github.com/francoism90/com.visualstudio.code.git
cd com.visualstudio.code
./build.sh
flatpak run com.visualstudio.code

build.sh adds the Flathub remote (user), builds to a local repo, then installs from that repo with the host's own flatpak binary (see Nested-sandbox install error below for why it's split into two steps).

To build manually:

flatpak run org.flatpak.Builder --user --install-deps-from=flathub --force-clean --repo=repo \
  build-dir com.visualstudio.code.yaml
flatpak --user remote-add --if-not-exists com.visualstudio.code-local ./repo --no-gpg-verify
flatpak --user install --noninteractive com.visualstudio.code-local com.visualstudio.code

Nested-sandbox install error

If flatpak-builder on your $PATH is itself a Flatpak (org.flatpak.Builder, e.g. on immutable/hardened distros without a native package), running it with --install directly can fail with:

bwrap: No permissions to create a new namespace, likely because the kernel
does not allow non-privileged user namespaces.
Error: Failed to install com.visualstudio.code: ...

That's org.flatpak.Builder's own sandbox trying to nest another bwrap sandbox for flatpak install, which some kernels/hardening policies block regardless of user-namespace permissions otherwise being fine. Building to a local repo and installing with the host's flatpak binary — as build.sh and the manual steps above do — sidesteps it, since that install then only needs one level of sandboxing, not two.

Signing

The signed repo published to GitHub Pages by .github/workflows/flatter.yml needs a GPG key in the GPG_PRIVATE_KEY (and optionally GPG_PASSPHRASE) repo secrets. Generate one with:

bin/create-keys "Your Name" "you@example.com"

This prints the values to add as repo secrets. Delete private.key and the flatter-keyring/ directory afterwards — never commit them.

Usage

Most functionality works out of the box, though please note that flatpak runs in an isolated environment and some work is necessary to enable those features.

Execute commands in the host system

To execute commands on the host system, run inside the sandbox:

flatpak-spawn --host <COMMAND>

or

host-spawn <COMMAND>

• Most users seem to report a better experience with host-spawn

Use host shell in the integrated terminal

Another option to execute commands is to use your host shell in the integrated terminal instead of the sandbox one.

For that go to File -> Preferences -> Settings and find Features > Terminal > Integrated > Profiles, then click on Edit in settings.json (The important thing here is to open settings.json)

And make sure that you have the following lines there:

Using flatpak-spawn:

{
  "terminal.integrated.defaultProfile.linux": "bash",
  "terminal.integrated.profiles.linux": {
    "bash": {
      "path": "/usr/bin/flatpak-spawn",
      "args": ["--host", "--env=TERM=xterm-256color", "bash"],
      "icon": "terminal-bash",
      "overrideName": true
    }
  }
}

Using host-spawn:

{
  "terminal.integrated.defaultProfile.linux": "bash",
  "terminal.integrated.profiles.linux": {
    "bash": {
      "path": "/app/bin/host-spawn",
      "args": ["bash"],
      "icon": "terminal-bash",
      "overrideName": true
    }
  }
}

• You can change bash to any terminal you are using: zsh, fish, sh.
• overrideName allows for the 'name' (or whatever you set it to) of the shell you're using to appear (e.g. normally zsh, fish, sh).

Support for language extension

Some Visual Studio extensions depend on packages that might exist on your host, but they are not accessible through Flatpak. Like support for programming languages: gcc, python, etc.

See available SDK:

flatpak run --command=sh com.visualstudio.code
ls /usr/bin # shared runtime
ls /app/bin # bundled with this flatpak

Getting support for additional languages, you have to install SDK extensions, e.g.:

flatpak install flathub org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.dotnet
flatpak install flathub org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.golang
FLATPAK_ENABLE_SDK_EXT=dotnet,golang flatpak run com.visualstudio.code

Container support (Podman):

To use Podman as a container runtime inside the sandbox (e.g. for Dev Containers), install the org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.podman SDK extension from its own repo (not on Flathub — see that repo for why) and enable it the same way:

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists francoism90-podman https://francoism90.github.io/org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.podman/index.flatpakrepo
flatpak install francoism90-podman org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.podman
FLATPAK_ENABLE_SDK_EXT=podman flatpak run com.visualstudio.code

Finding other SDK:

flatpak search <TEXT>