How to install vscode plugins in theia v1.54.0

[karen-paradime]

Hi,
We are in the process of updating from theia v1.42.1 to v1.54.0.

We have a couple of custom vscode extensions. In v1.42.1, we would use vsce to package the custom extensions, and then drop the generated vsix into our plugins folder. The plugins would then get loaded, and life was good.

With newer theia versions, our vscode extensions have stopped working. I found this PR which removes support for vsix files in the plugins folder. So, we unpacked our extensions and left them in the plugins folder. However, they still don't work.

To unpack each extension, we changed the file extension to .zip and then decompressed the zip.

To remove doubt that our code was the issue, we tried to install the vscode hello world plugin. This one does not load either. Interestingly, the "hello world" command (as defined in the package.json) does appear in the command palette, but on triggering the command we got an error command 'extension.helloWorld' not found. So, as far as I can see, our theia recognises the plugin and goes so far as to read the package.json - it just fails to activate the plugin.

On starting up theia, we do see an error stating that the plugin runtime crashed unexpectedly and not all plugins are running. However, in our server logs, the only plugin-related errors we are seeing relate to a different plugin (Failed to register a menu item for plugin ms-toolsai.jupyter contributed to interactive/toolbar).

So, the documentation still says dropping a vsix file into your plugins folder is enough - but this seems to no longer be the case. How do I install and use vscode plugins in theia v1.54.0?

[karen-paradime]

@xai wondering if you can offer any suggestions here?
Since your PR to ignore vsix files in the local plugins dir, we can't load vscode plugins anymore (because we were just dropping the vsix files straight in) - unpacking the plugin doesn't seem to be enough, is there some other trick we're missing here?