Provide support to synchronize settings across machines

[SrTobi]

There are quiet some extensions out there to handle setting synchronization between multiple computers. And in my opinion they are very important: Since vscode is very customizable with settings, keyboardshortcuts and extension it is very hard to synchronize those things between multiple workstations. And all those extensions are not really clean solutions, because vscode does nearly nothing to support them (for example the paths vscode uses are not exposed, see #2741).

So here some ideas to make synchronization clean and extensible:

• add a contribution point for synchronization extensions
  • Those extensions should not have to gather all the files that have to be synced. vscode should do this and then pass them to the extensions
  • Such an extension's job is only to upload/download the files, passed to them (so we can have the gist upload/svn upload/git repo upload/dropbox/filesystem/onedrive/ftp/other services.
  • Or maybe gather all settings into one big json object and pass that.
  • Support versioning and non versioning extensions
• add a remote_settings.json to build on top of the workspace-settings/user-settings stack.
• allow automatic and user triggered synchronization

Ok... just some ideas 😄

[Tyriar]

Related: #679

This is my solution for syncing keybindings and settings on Linux and Windows if you're interested. I haven't looked too deeply at doing it with extensions yet but I did file #691 some time ago to help with this.

[csholmq]

The plugin Sync Settings for Atom uses GitHub Gist to backup/sync:

• Settings
• Packages
• Keymap
• (Styles)
• (Init)
• Snippets

Atom also supports starring packages directly in Github and then easily install them using apm stars --user thedaniel --install.

[felixfbecker]

Imo this is a pretty low priority because most of the time settings are overwritten by workspace settings that are synced with version control anyway.

[csholmq]

@felixfbecker Extensions are however one of those things that doesn't version control. Neither is keymap.

[felixfbecker]

@csholmq That is a seperate issue though. For example, there could be a .vscode/extensions.json that specifies which extensions should be installed for this project, like editorconfig or a specific debug adapter, with a semver version constraint like a package.json.

[egamma]

This is not related to the original API request raised in this issue, but there is a sync extension that is using Gists. https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Shan.code-settings-sync

[csholmq]

@egamma Exactly the functionality I sought after. But as @felixfbecker mentioned, perhaps this issue is a separate one.

[jokeyrhyme]

It might also be nice to install an extension once on one machine, and have your other machines either prompt or automatically install the same extension everywhere else.

Atom had an online package browser with "stars", and there was a command you could run to install everything you'd starred. Still not automatic, but it was a start.

I know others might object, but I personally have no problem having to log in to VSCode with my Microsoft account once per machine, if it facilitated this level of convenience. Maybe a synchronisation framework or something could be offered, so that provider-specific extensions could implement authentication and cloud-persistence (e.g. one for Microsoft, one for Google Drive, Dropbox, etc).

[golf1052]

I wrote an extension a while ago (here, also hasn't been updated in a while) that tried to help sync extensions between computers using file synchronization services. Originally I only supported syncing themes because syncing extensions seemed somewhat messy.

I think this should be the right way to maintain extensions between computers. Keep a list of what extensions are installed where, be able to pick and choose what extensions should be installed on which computer and then only manage syncing settings for those extensions. I assume the recommended way for extensions to manage settings is through this?

[felixfbecker]

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Shan.code-settings-sync syncs extensions very well