publish-vscode-extension VS free-vscode-csharp

I have written a number of extensions, and I use the publish-vscode-extension GitHub action to publish my extensions to both marketplaces.

Lastly we will package and publish our extension using the Visual Studio Code Extension Manager and a GitHub Action called HaaLeo/publish-vscode-extension. The advantage of having the packaging and publishing step separated is that we can attach the compiled .vsix file as an artifact to the workflow and offer it as download. Make sure to generate a token (named in the workflow as VSC_MKTP_PAT and OPEN_VSX_TOKEN) to allow GitHub to publish your extension.

I use this github action to automate publishing of an extension to both marketplaces, publication is triggered when the main branch is updated. There a couple of other github actions for

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).