Hacker News Reader

Thanks for linking this. I wasn't surprised Microsoft made their AI auto completion proprietary (they did similar for C# in VSCode). But it grated me that semantic highlighting wasn't open source.

View on HN

What did they do for C#?

They added some closed source features to the C# developer extension in VSCode. So anybody using a non-Microsoft fork of VSCode can't use those features.

If you are referring to the debugger, they did not "add" it - it was like that from the start. The C# extension is MIT, but the 'vsdbg' it ships with isn't because it's a debugger Visual Studio uses made into a standalone cross-platform component.

You can use an extension fork which swaps it with NetCoreDbg maintained by Samsung instead. This is what VSCodium uses.

Also note that both of these essentially consume the debugger API exposed by the runtime itself, you can easily make one yourself in a weekend but no one bothered because there isn't much need for another one.

Personally the thing that annoys me isn't so much the open vs closed source of (parts of) these extensions, but the blocking of using these extensions on VSCode forks.

Extensions are not blocked. It's the redistribution restriction the 'vsdbg' component specifically comes with. But you can easily use the fork if it's an issue :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com