NETCONF CLIENT for Visual Studio Code

About

This vsCode extension implements an interactive NETCONF client, that runs against NETCONF servers, like NOKIA IP Routers powered by SR OS and SRLinux. By integrating NETCONF with Visual Studio Code, users will be able to extend the industry leading open-source code editor and integrated development environment by the ability to communicate with latest networking equipment using the NETCONF protocol.

The extension is implemented in native TypeScript and works on your desktop system of choice (Windows, macOS, Linux). It supports Remote SSH to simplify connectivity to lab environments using private IP addressing via SSH jump hosts and containerlab.

Build

To build this extension yourself, you can use "Visual Studio Code Extensions".

$ git clone https://github.com/nokia/vscode-netconf
$ cd vscode-netconf
$ npm install .
$ vsce package

Contributions

We are happy to have people contributing to this project. If you have feature request or if you want to report misfunctions, feel free to raise Issues.

If you want to contribute code-changes, you can contribute directly via normal pull-request procedure.

Getting Started!

Netconf server settings are persisted as part of the extension settings. For common cases like adding or deleting server entries, open the NETCONF view from the activity bar and you will have direct access to the server and connection list.

If you require advanced settings, like persisting the server passwords or adjusting the client capabilities, you will find those options as part of the extension settings.

Supported Features

• Support for NETCONF over SSHv2

  RFC 6241 and RFC 6242 compliant NETCONF client, fully integrated with Visual Studio Code. Both *end-of-message framing and chunked-framing (base:1.0 and base:1.1) are supported.

• Authentication support: username/password and key-based

• Connection control

  The user has control when to connect/disconnect to a NETCONF server. Multiple parallel NETCONF sessions are supported, while the user can decide, which RPC is send over which connection.

  This allows execute complex flows like lock > edit-config > validate > confirmed-commit > confirm > unlock. It's also an enabler to receive event notifications (see below). Detailed logs (per connection) are available using OUTPUT channels.

• Support for NETCONF event notifications

  The vscode-netconf extension is RFC 5277 compliant to receive NETCONF event notifications. Events will be buffered and while the status-bar shows the number of received events. By clicking on the events icon in the status-bar, a new TextDocument containing the buffered notifications will be opened and the buffer gets cleared.

  

• Examples library

  NETCONF request examples are available from https://github.com/nokia/netconf-examples and can be added to the vscode workspace.

  By default, the example library will be cloned to the users home directory. You can set the git.defaultCloneDirectory in the Visual Studio Code settings to an alternative folder like "~/Development" based on your personal needs.

• Access to server SSH greetings, SSH banner

• Access to NETCONF <hello/> messages

• Option: Prettify XML

  From the extension settings it is possible to activate the NETCONF: prettify option. This is useful, when NETCONF servers return minified XML.

• Option: SSH debug

  To troubleshoot SSHv2 related issues, like handshake problems around ciphers, and key-exchange algorithms, SSH debugging can be enabled. To check the logs, use the console-view part of Developer tools (accessible from Help).

• Integration with vscode-containerlab

  Create connections to nodes managed by containerlab, without the need to configure connection details. Extension will use containerlab hostname, default user and key-based authentication. Fallback to password-based authentication, while user is prompted to provide connecting details. Default settings can be tuned as needed.

  

Compatibility

Following vendors and device families have been tested so far:

Vendor	Product Family	Router OS
Ciena	5000 series	SAOS 10.9
Cisco	NCS 540 series	IOS-XR 7.9.1
Ericsson	6000 series	IPOS 23.1
Huawei	NetEngine 8000 series	rel 8.22/1
Juniper	MX series	JunOS 22.4R1
Nokia	SR families	SR OS
Nokia	SRL families	SR Linux

We don't mind to get access to 3rd party equipment (preferred virtual router/simulator images as virtual-machine or docker), test licenses and some basic instructions to extend the scope of our testing, improve compatibility and extend the capabilities.

Known issues

• NETCONF responses are opened as new TextDocument. Visual Studio Code is automatically setting the isDirty tag, while you can't simple close the document as the Save As dialogue will always show up.

  Related to vscode-issue #154664.

• NETCONF responses will open as Untitled TextDocument. It's not possible to provide meaningful tab-names. Ideally, we would pre-define a file:// location, that it could be saved by simply doing CTRL-S / CMD-S without Save As popup.

  Related to vscode-issue #41909.

• The vscode-netconf extension uses the API methods showInformationMessage(), showWarningMessage(), and showErrorMessage(). Messages are displayed as plain text without differentiation between message title and details and there is no possibility to show preformatted text and enforce line-breaks. In consequence, SSH banners are not displayed very nicely.

• Under rare conditions, NETCONF-over-SSH session death is not properly propagated. SSH-level keepalive mechanism can be activated to improve session health checks. If for whatever reason the underlying session died but extension state including status-bar was not updated, you can execute Developer: Reload Window from the Visual Studio command-palette. This will enforce the restart all extensions and fixes the issue.

License

This project is licensed under the BSD 3-Clause license - see the LICENSE.

Copyright (c) 2025 NOKIA