build/posts/vscode/index.html


1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
	<meta charset="utf-8">
	<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
	<meta name="color-scheme" content="dark light">
	<link rel="icon" href="data:,">
	<title>Running VSCode in Chromium on OpenBSD</title>
	<link href="/atom.xml" type="application/atom+xml" rel="alternate" title="Atom feed for blog posts" />
	<link href="/rss.xml" type="application/rss+xml" rel="alternate" title="RSS feed for blog posts" />
<style>*{box-sizing:border-box;}body{font-family:sans-serif;line-height:1.33;margin:0 auto;max-width:650px;padding:1rem;}blockquote{background:rgba(0,0,0,0.1);border-left:4px solid;padding-left:5px;}img{max-width:100%;}pre{border:1px solid;overflow:auto;padding:5px;}table{text-align:left;width:100%;}.footnotes{font-size:90%;}</style>
</head>

<nav>
	<a href="#menu">Menu &darr;</a>
</nav>

<main>
<h1 id="running-vscode-in-chromium-on-openbsd">Running VSCode in Chromium on OpenBSD</h1>
<p>2023-06-05</p>
<p>VSCode and its many variations are not available on OpenBSD. This doesn&#8217;t cause issue with many OpenBSD users, but those making the jump from Linux might miss access to such a popular editor. Lucky for us, there is a <em>hacky</em> workaround to solve this problem.</p>
<h2 id="vscode-in-the-browser">VSCode in the Browser</h2>
<p>I tried my best to build something like <code>code-server</code> locally and run that directly in my browser - but I failed miserably. Instead, I fell back on <a href="https://vscode.dev">vscode.dev</a> which is essentially a remote version of <code>code-server</code>.</p>
<p>Getting things to work seamlessly proved a little more challenging. I found the best performance was running everything through Chromium with special parameters enabled on launch.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Note:</strong> The following assumes you have already installed <code>chromium</code></p>
</blockquote>
<p>First we need to disable <a href="https://man.openbsd.org/unveil.2">unveil</a> for Chromium. This will allow us to access our system files through <a href="https://vscode.dev">vscode.dev</a> using the &#8220;Open folder&#8230;&#8221; or &#8220;Open file&#8230;&#8221; commands without issue:</p>
<pre><code>chrome --disable-unveil
</code></pre>
<p>Everything should work pretty solid right out the box now - except it doesn&#8217;t. Syntax highlighting does not work without enabling WASM&#47;WebAssembly. Your experience might be different, but I had to include the following when launching Chromium from the terminal:</p>
<pre><code>ENABLE_WASM=1 chrome --enable-wasm
</code></pre>
<p>Success! We can avoid typing out these complex commands everytime we want to launch our editor by setting up an <code>alias</code> (in my case via <code>.zshrc</code>):</p>
<pre><code>alias vscode="ENABLE_WASM=1 chrome --enable-wasm --disable-unveil"
</code></pre>
<p>That&#8217;s it! Now I can just pop open VSCode on OpenBSD by simply running <code>vscode</code> in my terminal. Hopefully this can help others slowly transition over to OpenBSD - which you should do because it is amazing!</p>
<footer role="contentinfo">
    <h2>Menu Navigation</h2>
    <ul id="menu">
        <li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
        <li><a href="/projects">Projects</a></li>
        <li><a href="/uses">Uses</a></li>
        <li><a href="/wiki">Wiki</a></li>
        <li><a href="/resume">Resume</a></li>
        <li><a href="/colophon">Colophon</a></li>
        <li><a href="/now">Now</a></li>
        <li><a href="/donate">Donate</a></li>
        <li><a href="/atom.xml">RSS</a></li>
        <li><a href="#top">&uarr; Top of the page</a></li>
    </ul>
    <small>
        Built with <a href="https://git.sr.ht/~bt/barf">barf</a>. <br>
        Maintained with ♥ for the web. <br>
        Proud supporter of <a href="https://usefathom.com/ref/DKHJVX">Fathom</a> &amp; <a href="https://nextdns.io/?from=74d3p3h8">NextDNS</a>. <br>
        The content for this site is <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">CC-BY-SA</a>.<br> The <a href="https://git.sr.ht/~bt/bt.ht">code for this site</a> is <a href="https://git.sr.ht/~bt/bt.ht/tree/master/item/LICENSE">MIT</a>.
    </small>
</footer>