When using VSCode on Posit Workbench, you may notice that you are not able to find some common VSCode extensions when searching for extensions in the Extension Marketplace.
This is because the open-source code-server executable integrated into Posit Workbench retrieves extensions from the Open VSX Registry Marketplace at https://open-vsx.org, instead of the Microsoft Visual Studio Marketplace at https://marketplace.visualstudio.com used by Microsoft's Visual Studio Code, which results in a difference in available extensions - for example, there is currently no equivalent Github Copilot (or GitHub Copilot Chat) extension available for code-server.
This is due to the terms of service of Microsoft VS Code Marketplace limiting access to only Microsoft products. There are more details on this at https://coder.com/docs/code-server/latest/FAQ#why-cant-code-server-use-microsofts-extension-marketplace and in our Posit Workbench Admin guide at https://docs.posit.co/ide/server-pro/vscode_sessions/installation.html#manually-installing-extensions:
It is against VS Code’s Terms of Service to use the official Marketplace extensions with third party tools like
code-server. We strongly recommend using a free and open source alternative like Open VSX.
You can request an extension be added to the Open VSX Registry Marketplace, as described here: https://coder.com/docs/code-server/latest/FAQ#how-can-i-request-an-extension-thats-missing-from-the-marketplace.
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