What is VSCE?

VSCE is the extension manager for developers working with VS Code extensions.

vsce, short for “Visual Studio Code Extensions”, is a command-line tool for packaging, publishing and managing VS Code extensions.

It an NPM package which helps you package your VS Code extension as a vsix file so it can be shared and installed easily.

Install

You can install it scoped to your project.

$ npm install vsce

Or install it globally.

$ npm install vsce -g

CLI

How to run

If installed in your project, run like this:

$ node_modules/.bin/vsce COMMAND ARGS

If installed globally, run like this:

$ vsce COMMAND ARGS

For the case of brevity, the shorter style is used for the remainder of this guide.

After getting familiar with the command, I now prefer to run it indirectly through npm run COMMAND style

Usage

$ vsce --help

Usage: vsce <command> [options]

Options:
  -V, --version                        output the version number
  -h, --help                           output usage information

Commands:
  ls [options]                         Lists all the files that will be published
  package [options]                    Packages an extension
  publish [options] [<version>]        Publishes an extension
  unpublish [options] [<extensionid>]  Unpublishes an extension. Example extension id: microsoft.csharp.
  ls-publishers                        List all known publishers
  create-publisher <publisher>         Creates a new publisher
  delete-publisher <publisher>         Deletes a publisher
  login <publisher>                    Add a publisher to the known publishers list
  logout <publisher>                   Remove a publisher from the known publishers list
  show [options] <extensionid>         Show extension metadata
  search [options] <text>              search extension gallery

Commands

Run these from the project root.

List

List all file that will be included in your package archive.

$ vsce ls

e.g.

...
> auto-commit-msg@0.10.0 clean /Users/mcurrin/repos/auto-commit-msg
> rm -rf ./out/*

bin/reset_sandbox.sh
docs/commit-philosophy.md
docs/credit.md
docs/deploy.md
...
shell/sample.sh
shell/simple-hook.sh
 INFO

If there any unexpected or unnecessary files, be sure to list them in your project’s .vscodeignore file.

This runs through all the build/test/pre-publish step but just does not output a file, only printing output.

Notes

The .vscodeignore file determines what gets excluded from the package. The .vsix file seems implied and not needed to be listed there. Same for package-lock.json and .vscode directory.

But other dot paths like .github and .gitignore must be listed in the ignore file. You might want to keep the docs and LICENSE though.

The vscode:prepublish step is set in package.json. This is run as part of vsce package command.