[j0e1]

As someone who has recently tried to refactor our app atop of VSCode (treating it like a platform), we got burned by the UI design decisions that are not straightforward to overcome, let alone maintain. The closed-source MS marketplace did not help either towards our OSS goals.

However, I found Theia (https://theia-ide.org) on HN (like a bunch of other cool things; this is one way I justify the time I spend/sink on this site) and find it a much better fit for our OSS goals (foundation owned, open-source marketplace) with full mod-ability while being compatible to VSCode extensions API (in theory). I recommend you look into it for your app.

[tristan957]

You can publish your extensions on OpenVSX fyi. A lot of projects have started doing that now. Not all, but a good amount. Glad you found Theia though.

[wesleyyue]

Ah interesting! I'm building https://double.bot (ai assistant vscode extension) and someone asked about VSCodium but I didn't realize there's a open marketplace for that specifically.

[aswerty]

Is Theia related to Eclipse (the traditional Java IDE)? Or is the reference to "eclipse" just an unfortunate naming collision?

[einsteinx2]

They created it, but the code base is unrelated.

[chikei]

It's made by Eclipse Foundation which was created to host projects around Eclipse the IDE. Kind of like project under Apache brand, Apache foundation and Apache the HTTP server.

[TiredOfLife]

Theia is the Monaco editor from VS Code with a different ui

[andrewpareles]

Thanks for sharing! If Theia is built on top of monaco, I wonder if a form of one-click switch might work. The monaco editor is theoretically part of the vscode repo, while the "workbench" with settings/configs lives one layer up.