Consuming Builtin and External VS Code Extensions

Overview

The Eclipse Theia framework supports VS Code extensions, which provide additional features such as language support, debuggers, themes, tools and so on to your application. For additional details regarding API compatibility please refer to our compatibility report.

Definitions

Extension Packs

The framework allows application developers the possibility to consume what is known as extension packs. Extension packs are essentially a set of extensions defined by id which will be installed together. The framework will make sure to install compatible versions of the listed extensions (according to the supported API version), and any extension dependencies. Extension packs are useful to group similar extensions together, and not have to worry about finding a compatible version yourself.

Builtin Extensions

VS Code comes with a list of "bundled" extensions which provide basic functionality such as themes, language syntax highlighting and so on which are included by default. These special extensions are often referenced directly by other external extensions in the registry. For convenience a eclipse-theia.builtin-extension-pack is published for Theia-based applications to consume.

Default Extensions

The framework allows application developers the possibility to define extensions which should be included by default in their application. For example, cdt-cloud-blueprint (which is used for C/C++ development) defines C/C++ extensions by default. For details on how to define and download default extensions please see here.