OpenVSX, which VSCode forks rely on for extensions, down for 24 hours

1. theia

   1 66 21,559 9.8 TypeScript

   Eclipse Theia is a cloud & desktop IDE framework implemented in TypeScript.

   

   100% this. It would be one thing if the only LSPs you could build came from Microsoft, but that’s just not true. It’s just that developing LSPs isn’t free.

   Cursor, Windsurf, etc. are building multi-billion dollar businesses off the backs of the work that the VS Code team has done. And that’s totally fine! What’s not fine, is trying to have access to the whole ecosystem of first party extensions that aren’t MIT licensed.

   I agree there should be more resilient extension repos, but this is one of the problems Eclipse Theia [0] has tried to take on, but most projects just fork the core VS Code experience and slot in OpenVSX rather than doing the hard, expensive work of building their own extension marketplaces or LSPs. And you know what, for a community or OSS fork, I think that’s fair. I think when you raise hundreds of millions in funding, you can build your own LSPs and start to maintain your own infra for extensions. And if you’ve got enough buy-in, you can probably convince developers to submit directly to your marketplace too.

   And it isn’t even a rug pull, per se. The first changes to the license on some of the 1P VS Code extensions probably happened in late 2018 or early 2019, with remote share. The LSPs may have changed later. If anything, the Code team was probably too lax about letting the commercial forks use their resources wholesale against the license terms for as long as they did.

   Disclaimer: I used to work at Microsoft and then at GitHub with things that touched VS Code. I now work at Google, who uses VS Code (well Monaco) inside some of our editors/products, but I don’t work on any of those.

   [0]: https://theia-ide.org/

2. SaaSHub

   www.saashub.com featured

   SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives

   

3. openvsx

   2 101 1,965 9.6 Java

   An open-source registry for VS Code extensions

   

   For context, Open VSX is run by the Eclipse foundation, which also develops the Eclipse Theia editor, which is basically a clone of VS Code (not a fork, like VS Codium).

   The Open VSX registry is open source (https://github.com/eclipse/openvsx) and self-hostable, although I have no experience with that. I assume it's possible to host your own instance with the extensions you want instead of relying on the free public instance.

   Personally I'm more of a Sublime guy, but people looking for an open VSC alternative should consider Theia over VSC forks. It seems like the smarter long term investment if you want to get out from Microsoft's control.

4. helix

   3 484 44,803 9.8 Rust

   A post-modern modal text editor.

   

   Lots of vim/emacs mentions so I feel obliged to mention Helix (https://helix-editor.com/). Used neovim for _years_, tried Helix for a few weeks and never looked back

5. vscodium

   4 580 31,872 9.4 Shell

   binary releases of VS Code without MS branding/telemetry/licensing

   

   Thanks, haven't tried it yet, but just found the relevant configuration settings described in the docs [0] and more detail on Stack Overflow [1].

   [0] https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/prepare_vsc...

   [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44057402/using-extension...

6. distant.nvim

   5 31 1,364 4.3 Lua

   🚧 (Alpha stage software) Edit files, run programs, and work with LSP on a remote machine from the comfort of your local environment 🚧

   

   There are a couple of options for Remote SSH with neovim:

   - https://github.com/chipsenkbeil/distant.nvim

   - https://github.com/mikew/nvrh

7. nvrh

   6 1 72 7.4 Go

   Aims to be similar to VSCode Remote, but for Neovim

   

   There are a couple of options for Remote SSH with neovim:

   - https://github.com/chipsenkbeil/distant.nvim

   - https://github.com/mikew/nvrh

8. lapce

   7 188 38,622 7.6 Rust

   Lightning-fast and Powerful Code Editor written in Rust

   

9. open-vsx.org

   8 7 350 9.6 TypeScript

   Source of open-vsx.org

   

   I happened to be poking around in their issues to see if there were mirrors and observed that in addition to the linked status page on this thread, the underlying Eclipse Foundation has their own (multiple) status tracking channels

   most relevant: https://www.eclipsestatus.io/incident/549796?mp=true

   their helpdesk ticket: https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipsefdn/helpdesk/-/issues/5924...

   the issue in their GitHub issue tracking for the site: https://github.com/EclipseFdn/open-vsx.org/issues/3805

   the tl;dr seems to be a massive storage failure and just like any storage problem putting all the bytes back is some "please wait"

10. Code-Server

    9 435 77,841 9.1 TypeScript

    VS Code in the browser

    

    But hasn't Coder.com[0] built a business around exactly that?

    [0] https://github.com/coder/code-server

11. zed

    10 287 84,612 10.0 Rust

    Code at the speed of thought – Zed is a high-performance, multiplayer code editor from the creators of Atom and Tree-sitter.

    

    Have you compared helix to zed (https://zed.dev/)? I want something VSCode-ish, could never really get used to vim myself. But definitely don't want something built on Electron, it's too bloated. Zed and Helix are both built in Rust without Electron, which is already promising.

12. Roslyn

    11 177 20,461 10.0 C#

    The Roslyn .NET compiler provides C# and Visual Basic languages with rich code analysis APIs.

    

13. netcoredbg

    12 15 1,282 7.6 C#

    NetCoreDbg is a managed code debugger with GDB/MI, VSCode DAP and CLI interfaces for CoreCLR.

    

14. free-vscode-csharp

    13 17 274 9.8 TypeScript

    Free/Libre C# support for VSCode-compatible editors

    

15. avante.nvim

    14 17 17,937 9.6 Lua

    Use your Neovim like using Cursor AI IDE!

    

    I saw someone mention Avante on here a few days ago, which looks like it tries to emulate the Cursor experience in Vim. Might be worth a look: https://github.com/yetone/avante.nvim

16. helix-zsh

    15 1 55 5.0 Shell

    Helix bindings for zsh

    

    Strongly agree. There's a new page on the site about helix-mode in other editors (although there are a limited number of entries): https://docs.helix-editor.com/master/other-software.html

    I myself have built zsh bindings for helix as that was my main pain point: https://github.com/john-h-k/helix-zsh

Suggest a related project