omnisharp-vscode VS free-vscode-csharp

They announced a year ago they are working on better C# support in VSCode https://github.com/omnisharp/omnisharp-vscode/issues/5276

OmniSharp (soporte de C# en VS Code): Licencia MIT

Let me try to find that post. It's basically the drama around this

> They did a wonderful job with C# and .NET Core.

And VSCode. One thing all three have in common is that they are all FREE to use--they don't make Microsoft any money directly.

And, for the segment of the developer tools market that wrangles C# code, if VSCode gets too good, it becomes a threat to a cash cow: Visual Studio.

Start here: https://github.com/OmniSharp/omnisharp-vscode/issues/5276#is...

Sounds like this issue https://github.com/OmniSharp/omnisharp-vscode/issues/2513

Open source. OP is referencing a decision Microsoft made last year to include some closed-source components, in particular the debugger from Visual Studio, in the default C# extension for Visual Studio Code. There is a Samsung-provided open source debugger available if you absolutely require it, but the closed source stuff doesn't have any usage restrictions afaik.

I only tried F# for few days, but it was a pleasant experience on both macos and linux.

dotnet CLI should take care of build process, it can even generate self-sufficient executable (that bundle parts of .NET in them). The infamous required XML boilerplate has also been cut down to near-zero.

My biggest gripe is that Microsoft's debugger is closed-source and proprietary (though free for users of official VSCode builds). There is open-source netcoredbg by Samsung, so you can use VSCod[e,ium] with https://open-vsx.org/extension/muhammad-sammy/csharp , but YMMV.

When looking into C# tools though, my understanding is that the main debugging tool is under a proprietary MS license, although maybe I'm misunderstanding that. My question is, is there a FOSS debugger or tool kit for C# development? I did find this on the marketplace but am not sure if this is what I'm looking for. I know this is a bit of a niche case but was hoping to clarify. I'm not committed to VSCodium and am open to other text editors/IDEs, although would prefer to stick with it if possible.

My understanding is that I can install VSCodium and that they have many of the most popular extensions available. They even seem to have an alternative for the C# debugger. I could also use VSCodium and manually install the Microsoft extensions from the distributed VSX files.

and there is a VSCode extension that uses this instead of the MS debugger

https://open-vsx.org/extension/muhammad-sammy/csharp

C# language (powered by OmniSharp): Official C# language support. The extension is subject to this restrictive license because it uses Microsoft's proprietary debugger. The source code is available under a MIT license. See this comment in the C# extension repo for some discussion on this. There is an alternative version of the C# extension in the Open VSX Registry that uses Samsung’s MIT-licensed Debugger.

Yeah, Gitpod is pretty nice for what it is. Although it's worth mentioning that certain proprietary Microsoft extensions are licensed for use only in Microsoft distributions of VSCode, so they won't work in Gitpod. Most extensions do work, but Pylance, C#, C/C++ doesn't, to name a few exceptions. Although for C# there is a FOSS extension you can use instead and for C/C++ there is clangd.

I'm not very familiar with C# and .NET, so I can't help you with any specifics. But I do know that Microsoft actively prevent the usage of their proprietary extensions such as the one for C# in non-Microsoft distributions of VS Code, such as VSCodium. Although if you're using VSCodium, you've probably installed the alternative FOSS version of the C# extension, unless you've sideloaded the official C# extension?

For C# there is https://github.com/muhammadsammy/free-omnisharp-vscode for Python there is https://github.com/Microsoft/pyright (Pylance is the proprietary counterpart) for C++ there is https://github.com/clangd/vscode-clangd

If you want to stay FOSS, you can use this fork of the C# plugin which uses a free debugger: https://github.com/muhammadsammy/free-omnisharp-vscode

The download URL for the debugger seems to have changed, but the latest version of the extension should include a fix for that (see muhammadsammy/free-omnisharp-vscode#20).